When I was recently asked to write something for Children of the Headache I was chuffed. That’s very cool I thought, only for a slight wave of panic to wash over me – what the bloody hell am I going to write? Now some of you might know me, and know that I am often difficult to shut up, so it irked me that I was drawing a blank (hey look there’s a comic pun at no extra cost).

 

So I did something that I haven’t done for a long time. I sat down and watched some David Icke. For those who don’t know, Icke is an ex footballer and BBC sports pundit that had a revelation (breakdown) in the mid nineties that included invisible presences, voices in his head, meetings with spiritualists, a turquoise shell suit, multiple live in lovers, premonitions of the worlds end in 1997 and the announcement on national TV that Icke was in fact the son of god. In 1998 he first spoke of his magnificent octopus (magnum opus) – the idea that most prominent famous or wealthy people, including Henry Kissinger, the Bush family and the UK royal family, were in fact reptilian aliens from the Draco constellation that can shape shift to human form. He in no way copied this from the TV series V or from the books of Robert E Howard, or from an episode of Dr Who (despite his theories being identical in content)  – and any suggestion that his theory simply cribs from these previously existing sources is obviously wrong, it is just a complete coincidence.

 

For several years I was actually quite a fan of Icke. The first time I watched a lecture by him I did it purely to rip the piss, but was surprised to find a calm, seemingly rational person providing what looked like evidence of some rather out there ideas. Whilst some of it was patently nonsense, some of it, on the surface at least sounded plausible.

 

As the years went on though, more and more wacky stuff was introduced into his spiel – topics such as the moon being a space station beaming reality to the planet and the world being run by a secret Jewish cult called Sabbattean Frankists became his stock topics. Then covid happened.

 

This was when he really got on my nerves. In early 2020 Icke decided that Covid simply didn’t exist, he promoted the work of a conman failed psychiatrist named Andrew Kaufmann who stated that viruses themselves don’t exist. Kaufmanns lies gave comfort to legions of idiots during the pandemic who sent him a shit ton of money that he promptly spent on a hair transplant. Icke also claimed that the 5G phone network was probably the cause of all the illness (he actually nicked this from another conman named Thomas Cowan) and started spouting absolute bullshit about tests for the virus not working – “A test that doesn’t test for the test” was his somewhat insensible mantra on the subject. I personally know vulnerable fans of David who put themselves in dangerous situations and got ill after following his stupid advice. I wouldn’t be surprised if his silly attention seeking contrarianism killed people.  He also did several interviews with piss drinking, pyramid scheme enthusiast Brian Rose who runs the terrible London Real website. Rose is a man who conned his followers into paying for a website that he got hosted for free, all the time whilst presenting himself as a billionaire.

 

So I had avoided him for a while – but needs must.

 

So I tuned into his Dot Connector show about the fake alternative media – which was apparently irking David – who was in no way bitter about other people’s success – he was simply concerned that he wasn’t getting the recognition, attention and support that he felt entitled to.

 

The show opened with an advertisement for products to get rid of chemtrails – which are not a real thing and how to utilise sovereign law (an idea that most laws don’t actually apply to people) – which is also not a real thing. “Off to a good start” I thought.

 

David starts by saying that Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson are “rushing to pick a side” in the recent Israel Palestine conflict. “If you pick a side you start to become an apologist for that side” warns Icke, “Because of not understanding reality” – straight off the bat I though this is rich coming from a man who spent the last three years telling everyone that the worldwide pandemic was fake and had stuck stubbornly to this bullshit in spite of the overwhelming evidence that he was incorrect This is a man who has literally ignored reality. This is a man telling us that George Soros, Bill Gates et al are part of an evil satanic cult that we need to resist at all costs who is now telling us not to pick a side. This is a man who has his own private booth, inside the VIP area of his own specially vetted echo chamber. He then says that it is better to judge someone’s behaviour and not pick a side. Surely the behaviour would dictate if you wanted to join that side – and further more the behaviour of alleged rapist Brand and serial liar and exploiter of lonely men Peterson is also appalling – this is not touched on. It gets less and less coherent as the interview progresses.

 

David then explains that this cult (Sabbattean Frankists) secretly rule the world – which is his latest thing – he actually cribbed it from an obscure conspiracy theorist named Rabbi Antlemann who released a book titled To Eliminate the Opiate in 1974. The theory is that anti Jewish hatred is actually promoted by a secret sect of Jews that want to introduce a world communist state. They aren’t really Jews so it can’t be anti Semitic – however they do all happen to be Jewish. It’s basically a have your cake and eat it too version of the NWO world Jewish conspiracy with a layer of secret Jews which apparently means that it isn’t anti Semitic. However, other than David Icke the person who has promoted this theory the most is ex KKK leader David Duke – which obviously leaves somewhat of a bad taste in ones mouth.

 

David Icke has always denied accusations of anti Semitism. However, he has dallied with holocaust denial, he has promoted the Protocols of Zion as a real and accurate document and talks about the Rothschild’s controlling all banks and financing all wars since they took over the bank of England shortly after the Battle of Waterloo. The Protocols were invented by agents of the Russian secret police to persecute Jews and are a complete fabrication. Most of the canards against the Rothschild actually come from the Nazi produced film Die Rothschild – a propaganda piece designed to persecute Jews. The idea that the Rothschild’s took controlling interest in the bank of England following the battle of Waterloo is also fiction. It came from the Satan pamphlet and the fictional Satan pamphlet written by anti-Semite Mathieu Georges Dairnvaell - which was also designed to persecute the Jews. None of the accusations in any of these documents were true (and neither is the idea that the Rothschild’s family have financed both sides of every war since Waterloo) but Icke promotes them all as fact. In his defence, when Icke says reptiles this is not a euphemism for Jews – he genuinely believes in extra terrestrial reptiles.

 

David then transitions into a rant about the “woke” – those concerned with civil rights and equality – saying that the woke will always pick a side. He gives examples – covid being real, climate change being real, the invasion of Ukraine (he doesn’t specify what exactly about the invasion just that the woke are wrong). After chastising the “woke” for picking a side he heavily implies that they are incorrect in their views and that the correct opinion is that of the other side – which he belongs to. He then states that the woke “are being played like a spring instrument”. I think he meant string.

 

Jaymie – his son who is interviewing him – makes the point that Hamas and the IDF are essentially exactly the same – the reasoning – they both encouraged people to take the vaccine against covid in Palestine and Israel respectively. Thinking about this, these similarities run much deeper – they both promote eating, breathing, sleeping and I presume have similar ideas about day and night, up and down and the colours black and white – if this isn’t total proof of some overarching secret alien cult being in control I don’t know what is. “That is a great point” David concedes before sandbagging his son and taking credit for it himself, “I said that on social media earlier this week.” 

 

David then segues into his main bone of contention – the Mainstream alternative – “They get a big audience” he says with no hint of bitterness. He is referring to people like Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Laurence Fox and others – who most would label as alt right. Now here Icke has touched on something true – but only by accident. In the past few years, members of the alt right have embraced the conspiracy crowd. This is simply because they saw a demographic that was ripe for fleecing. They witnessed the anger, resentment and yearning for answers in a large number of people and they took advantage of this. The method is to imply that there is an existential threat to the viewer that they have no power over and tell them that you support them. This existential threat could be foreigners, the WEF, environmental concerns, Trans people, democrats, black people or any number of things that terrify the ill informed. Say a couple of buzzwords and the audience will eat out of your hand. This started with Gamergate – manipulating like minded individuals to a cause that unites them, then Brexit via Cambridge Analytica, then the election of Trump and then pandering to people’s annoyance at restrictions caused by covid. However the tactic is a lot older than that. It originally came from the John Birch Society – as so many conspiracies do. Roger Ailes, a John Birch member, wanted to popularise the Tea Party political movement – the problem was most people saw it as batshit crackers. So he introduced a new presentation style to Fox news – opinions and characters.  People like Sean Hannity, Bill OReily, Tucker Carlson and others would offer opinions on existential threats facing the viewer.

 

The purpose was to cause anger. Anger is addictive; it causes a chemical response in your brain similar to gambling. People get this buzz from being angry and so seek out things that will annoy them. Through this tactic Fox was not only able to garner a loyal and furious fan base but also popularise the paranoid ramblings of the John Birch Society and Tea Party movement. Similar tactics were used to bolster a seething support for Brexit and later an outraged army of Trump fans. The problem is that this was also cultivated by the conspiracy crowd. Aside from the far right canards about George Soros, the Rothschild’s or other Jews ruling the world, the conspiracy crowd also are suspicious of immigration, Black lives matter, Trans people and have a penchant for holocaust denial. Other fascist ideas such as hierarchies of people (we like gays but not Trans) and thinking of countries as organisms that can be infected by outside influence are also rife in the conspiracy crowd. 

 

Recently – seeing that these alt right shits have drawn a big crowd, David and others have attempted to co-opt back some of their audience. This has included Icke providing a platform for arseholes such as Tommy Robinson and Katy Hopkins and others such as Alex Jones promoting Nick Fuentes, Milo Yiannapopolous and entertaining the insane Hitler praising rants of Kanye West. Richplanet promoted holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom and German new medicine that postulates that you can only get cancer if a Jew injects it into you. Richie Allen platforms far right activists such as Mark Collett. Although there may be hints of ideological overlap, my opinion is this is more to do with getting a wider audience than anything else. For a time in the conspiracy world it was very fashionable to think that maybe Hitler had had rather a rough deal of it all. Racism and bigotry is tolerated under the banner of free speech. Now the entire genre has shifted to the right and sometimes far right. You lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas .However it becomes clear as the interview progresses that Ickes personal gripe seems to be based in jealousy. 

 

Jaymie says that Trump’s election pulled the conspiracy crowd into politics – which is kind of true but ignores earlier examples like Brexit. Icke fully supported Brexit and at the time encouraged people not to vote for Jeremy Corbyn – labour party, implying that you should vote for the Conservative government in order to get Brexit done. Icke says that Trump is a fraud – because he promoted Covid vaccines – but does praise him for his hysterical, inaccurate, racist views on Critical Race Theory – so there’s something. Trump cleverly cultivated the conspiracy crowd by pretending to be anti establishment. In reality he is backed by think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the CNP – you can’t really get more establishment than that. 

 

The reason for David not getting the recognition that others do is because of the secret cult – of course it is. According to Icke the cult own media outlets such as GB news, which purport to be anti msm, but are, as David describes – “agents of here and no further”. David says they only go so far in revealing information about what is going on – giving the impression of being alternative but really being a stooge. David goes all the way. An analogy would be that GB news are Blink 182 – a pop act that gives the impression of rebellion, whereas David sees himself as The Sex Pistols – purer in message and better all round. The simpler explanation is that GB news are shit houses who play on the fears of their gullible audiences, presented in a similar manner to conspiracy theorists – or identical to the Roger Ailes model of Fox news if you want to be completely accurate.

 

There is an irony here with Icke claiming GB news are a distraction from his real insights. It has long been said that conspiracy theorists such as Icke are considered useful idiots by governments around the world for focusing on ludicrous things. For example if we are worried that the UK Government is full of space lizards who want to kill you with a vaccine, we completely ignore real improprieties such as expense scandals and embezzlement of public funds.

 

David turns his critique to Andrew Tate saying that he only focuses on the attacks on masculinity and the “suppression of the male” (When oh when will the straight white male ever catch a break) but in terms of the wider agenda he “hasn’t got a clue”. My chief concern with Tate wouldn’t be that. I would focus on him being a terrible role model, a materialistic wanker and most importantly a pimp, sex trafficker and an alleged rapist. Icke is more concerned that he nicked his interpretation of the film the Matrix as an accurate portrayal of aliens harvesting negative energy from humans. “Tate says he was talking about the Matrix years ago” Icke says visibly angered, “You don’t even know what the Matrix is”. In reality the Matrix is an action film that also works as an allegory for the experience of being trans. Icke believes that it is literally a true representation of reality – but with robots instead of lizards.

 

Icke then mentions Jordan Peterson, who he claims, “knows nothing about the big picture” and who, in a moment of peak irony, he accuses of “commenting on things he hasn’t got a clue about”. The main problem with Peterson is that he lies. It’s the same tactic. Scare the gullible with an existential threat to their way of life. In Petersons case it was Bill C-16 – which he claimed meant that you could be imprisoned or fined for accidentally misgendering a person. The bill made no such claim, Peterson simply made it up, however an army of men, confused and threatened by the progress of the modern world took this fabrication as indicative that the culture war was real and not the fevered imaginings of a bunch of terrified bigots.

 

Icke then goes on to praise Tucker Carlson. Carlson has, for the majority of his career, spent his time as a paid liar and antagonist for the Fox news network and is often financed by the Kochs. He is literally everything that Icke should be fighting against. This leads one to wonder why he likes him so much.

 

But then we get to the crux of Ickes gripe. All those previously mentioned, along with Ben Shapiro, have in some way leapt to the defence of Russell Brand – who has recently been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault and rape. Icke is angry that this group of people that he believes, quite rightly in some cases, have somewhat stolen his style, didn’t jump to his defence when he was kicked off twitter, or banned from Australia or banned from 26 countries in the EU. Icke was banned from Australia for holocaust denial and from the EU because he planned to speak at a far right rally. If I was cynical- and I am – I would suggest that I thought Icke tried to get kicked off twitter by continuously posting things that he knew were against the terms of service. At the time it was rather fashionable to do this in the name of free speech or some other such nonsense. This would of course drive people to Ickes new pay per view internet channel, but I’m sure that was merely a happy coincidence. He then accuses Peterson of talking in word salads and Brand of using overly flowery language to conceal that he isn’t actually that clued up – “They actually say nothing” Icke claims, completely missing the pot kettle scenario  that others may have picked up on. Icke claims the reason for them shunning him is two-fold. One, they simply aren’t on his level and don’t understand the enormity of what Icke is trying to convey and two, the majority of people think that Icke is mad and any association with him could be damaging to their image.

 

Icke bemoans the think tank ARC, a quasi religious think tank that promotes the fossil fuel industry. Not because of its connection to the fossil fuel industry but because he sees it as controlled opposition. This is mainly because it is financed by Peter Marshall who through his Legatum think tank – also financed by the Kochs – finances GB news – who Icke thinks don’t go far enough with their far right batshittery, well not far enough for him anyway. Interestingly, Peter Marshall got his start in the industry with a loan from George Soros, arch bogeyman of the conspiracy crowd. They tend to overlook this because GB news panders to their worldview and because most don’t know. The do your own research crowd often isn’t great at research.

 

Icke then praises far right politician Eva Vlaaddingerbrook for her stance on fighting the WEF on behalf of Dutch farmers (Recently Dutch farmers have been told to reduce nitrogen emissions – this has nothing to do with the WEF but has been seized upon by the far right as an example of environmentalism gone mad) but is sad that she is connected to ARC. Strangely he isn’t bothered at all about her far right politics, her anti feminist, anti abortion, anti immigration, anti Muslim, anti Semitic beliefs or the fact that she promotes the racist great replacement theory.

 

Icke says that there is a lot of religion in the alt media and that religion again causes you to pick sides and view the world through the lens of that religion. This is again quite ironic as Icke himself rails against satanic practices and rituals supposedly carried out by the elites. Recently Peterson has become very religious, Tate is Islamic, Ben Shapiro is not shy about his devotion to Judaism and Alex Jones has claimed to have been chosen by God to be a trailblazer. Alex Jones used to refer to Icke as “The turd in the punch bowl” because he felt the lizards made other conspiracies look daft by association. Since then Alex has gone fully loony himself, often talking about demons and inter-dimensional beings – so I assume they are friends now.

 

Icke, it must be remembered, used to claim to be the literal son of god. He made this claim on the Wogan TV show and then explained that he had the same messianic connection to god that Jesus did on the Late Late show the following evening. Some revisionists try to claim that Icke meant – we are all children of God. Though he did say this, he clarified to interviewer Gay Byrne that he was the same as Jesus – an agent with a direct connection to the godhead that was here to spread truth. It is not clear if Icke still thinks that he is the son of god. 

 

Icke then focuses on his main target – Joe Rogan –Icke is annoyed that Rogan refuses to interview him. He is also angry that when interviewing Russell Brand the pair took the piss out of Icke and claimed there was literally no evidence for his reptile aliens theory – which is sort of true. There’s a lot of hearsay and conjecture – which are types of evidence I suppose. This particularly annoyed Icke as Russell Brand has form for ripping the piss out of Icke. Previously the pair were on good terms then two incidents happened that Icke will not forgive. Firstly Brand invited Icke onto his TV show Brand X – and went about putting pictures of prominent celebrities on the big screen asking Icke who was and who wasn’t a reptile. Later Icke was invited onto Brands radio show where Noel Gallagher proceeded to mock Icke mercilessly, again asking if he and others that he knew were actually reptiles. Since then Icke has spent much time on twitter calling Joe Rogan a coward and trying to goad him into interviewing him. 

 

This is all a pattern that some have suggested implies Icke is actually more concerned with getting attention from a large audience than telling the truth. In fact that’s what got him banned from Australia, refusing to acknowledge the holocaust. The suggestion was that Icke didn’t want to alienate the part of his audience that embraced holocaust denial. He did a similar thing with flat earth – never saying that the world wasn’t flat, rather hedging his bets to avoid losing an audience share.

 

His next target is Elon Musk. Icke isn’t cross that Musk is embracing far right nonsense or that he has turned twitter into a total shower of shit – no, it’s his popularity that irks David. “He’s just telling them what they want to hear” and “If we know that the deep state was dictating twitter content (it wasn’t) then why did the same deep state allow Musk to buy twitter”

 

To Ickes chagrin, these characters all seem to be in with one another and all interview each other, whereas Icke is marginalised.

 

Jaymie says that from their experience the wilder, more far out, wacky theories get far more traction on the internet, which may be why Icke has started talking about the reptiles much more often recently, having previously avoided them in favour of his Sabbatean Frankists theory. Jaymie wonders if this “Here and no further” group are to stop people looking for the crazier theories – like a barrier to the truth. This makes no sense as those seeking out the “wackier” stuff will still want that and are hardly likely to be satisfied with this groups watered down hysteria – they want the full lunacy. However David agrees that this is exactly what is happening.

 

David, a man who believes that Reptilian aliens are using an obscure Jewish cult to control the planet, who believes that covid isn’t real and doesn’t exist, who believes that the moon is a spaceship beaming reality to the planet, then warns the audience that religion is bad as it comprises a belief structure. He goes on to say that the world is probably a simulation, that reincarnation is definitely real (I wonder why this topic appeals to the aging Icke) and that scientists know nothing about the world as the electromagnetic spectrum is only a tiny fraction of reality. He fails to see the irony that scientists discovered and explained this but hey ho. He then implies that he knows better than all the scientists in the world and says that we need “humility” to progress.

 

Then the entire agenda is laid out. There is a non human entity that feeds off negative emotion that ultimately controls the world. Their plans are to depopulate the planet. This will be achieved through low sperm counts, low testosterone and attacks on the family unit. This is also ironic because during his turquoise period Icke himself lived in a polyamorous relationship with three women – until he kicked one of them out because he became convinced that she was secretly a reptilian alien. Icke says this is why they are attacking Andrew Tate, because he promotes strong men. He is being attacked because he is a sex trafficking pimp and a rapist and by all account a wanker –not because he promotes strength. Also being a pimp isn’t promoting family values either. Icke doubles down saying that drag queen story hour is there to confuse children and stop them from procreating to depopulate the planet. This raises questions. If there really is an alien entity that lives off our fear, is their best plan to depopulate the planet really to get some pantomime dames to read stories to children in the hope that they turn gay? That’s rather a drawn out plan isn’t it? Surely there must be a simpler way? I’m pretty sure that’s not how sexuality works anyway. Furthermore wouldn’t the depopulation of the planet result in these aliens starving themselves? Where will they get their delicious fear then? How does all this stack up with the fact that the global population keeps rising year after year? If this alien life force has been banging away at this plan for years why are they so bad at it? Are they failing in their war against humanity despite the majority of people not even knowing that they exist? It just seems needlessly complicated.

 

This reminded me of a conversation I had just the other day. The film Terminator was recently somewhat ruined by a good friend of mine (well what are friends for). He pointed out that if you were to think of the humans in the film as a mice infestation and as Skynet as a homeowner then Skynet’s plan in the film is stupid. “What would you do if you had mice Neil?” he asked, “Would you put down traps and poison or would you build a sophisticated robot mouse, which looks like a real mouse on the outside and use that to infiltrate the mice through gaining their initial trust and then killing them one at a time?” He’s right of course but he is no longer allowed to watch films with me. He needlessly ruined something by being petty and pedantic. He spoiled it by over scrutinising, nitpicking and pointing out the holes in the narrative. I hate it when people do that.