-
- Will Offley is the former security coordinator of Everywoman's
Health Centre in British Columbia, a member of New Socialist Group, researcher
on Christian right and antichoice movements in Canada. This article will
appear in Canadian Jewish Outlook and appears here with the author's permission.
-
-
- On Sunday, March 19th, British conspiracy theorist David
Icke will be speaking all day at the Vogue Theatre, 918 Granville Street
in Vancouver. Icke's politics are a very weird blend of New Age guru, anti-Semitism
and neofascism. He is also antichoice.
-
- Icke's background, politics and connections show there
is an urgent need for the pro-choice and women's mevements to join forces
with the Jewish community, gays and lesbians, people of colour, the left
and all other communities under threat by the far right. The backgrounder
below should give a fair picture of what Icke stands for, and who supports
him.
-
- * * *
-
- On the face of it, few people would credit a retired
soccer player who rants about a world takeover by blood-drinking lizards
from outer space as being much of a threat to democracy. And as a general
rule, they would probably be right.
-
- David Icke, however, is an exception to that rule.
-
- Icke, 48, is a native of Leicester, England. For five
years he played professionally for the Coventry City and Hereford United
soccer teams until forced to retire by arthritis. He subsequently went
on to become a sports announcer for BBC-TV. For three years from 1988 to
1991 he was national spokesperson for the British Green Party, until he
began a political evolution that was to begin with his expulsion from the
Greens and wind up with his current involvement with anti-Semitism, neofascism,
and lizards from Mars.
-
- At first this evolution seemed relatively harmless. Icke
began to flirt seriously with New Age theories, and then began to act on
them. He dressed in turquoise, and began to call himself the "son
of godhead". But by the time his book "The Robot's Rebellion"
was printed in 1994, his trajectory had begun to take quite a different
course. In 1996, the British magazine "Left Green Perspectives"
wrote that this book "indicated a convergence of New Age thinking
with Nazi philosophy. Casting aside his pat concerns about the environment,
Icke enthusiastically embraced the classic Nazi conspiracy theory, alleging
that the world is controlled by a secret cadre of "The Elite."
He openly endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Tsarist anti-Semitic
forgery that informed Hitler's notion of a global Jewish conspiracy."
-
- The following year Icke brought out another book, "And
the truth shall set you free." This one, however, was self-published,
as its content was so objectionable that his publisher refused to have
it printed. And small wonder. The book repeated Icke's previous claims
that the Protocols were true, and went on to state: "I strongly believe
that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people
worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution,
and the Second World War....They then dominated the Versailles Peace Conference
and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable.
They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for
his rearmament."
-
- In this book, Icke went even further. He began to flirt
explicitly with Holocaust denial, saying "why do we play a part in
suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second
World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on,
free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler's List, are given to schools
to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events. And why
do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people
to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the
spot, for suggesting another version of history." He also denounced
the Nuremberg Trials as "a farce" and "a calculated exercise
in revenge and manipulation."
-
- Icke's politics today are a mishmash of most of the dominant
themes of contemporary neofascism, mixed in with a smattering of topics
culled from the U.S. militia movement. He has written diatribes on the
Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission
as examples of secret plots to take over the world. He opposes gun control
as a plot by this Elite, which has deliberately orchestrated numerous mass
shootings to whip up opposition to guns. He has repeatedly posted anti-abortion
literature and articles on his web site. He rails against conspiracies
to implant microchips in everyone's bodies, coded with the Satanic number
"666". He even accuses the U.S. government of carrying out the
Oklahoma City bombing and murdering 168 men, women and children.
-
- For a decade Icke has exhibited signs of serious mental
instability. In his web site autobiography he reveals that as early as
1990 he became aware of "a presence around me, like 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." A year later, on holiday
in Peru, Icke describes hearing voices: "as I looked at the mound,
a voice in my head began to say: "Come to me, come to me, come to
me.... Suddenly I felt me feet pulled to the ground again like a magnet,
the same as in the newspaper shop, but this time far more powerful. My
arms them shot above my head, with no decision by me for them to do so....
A flow of powerful energy began to go into the top of my head like a drill,
and I could feel the flow going the other way up from the ground through
my feet. It was then I heard the third voice in my head, something that
has never happened since. It said very clearly: "It will be over when
you feel the rain".
-
- Over the last year Icke's writings have become so paranoid
and so extreme that many are probably inclined to dismiss him as posing
any sort of threat, or requiring a response. Icke is now arguing in all
seriousness that the Illuminati plot to take over the world is actually
being carried out by a race of extraterrestrial reptiles in human form.
They are described, literally, as being child-sacrificing, blood-drinking
Satan-worshippers capable of changing their shape, whose ranks include
George Bush, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mum, Bob
Hope and Kris Kristofferson, among others.
-
- David Icke is not alone. He is a small industry in a
large and lucrative market of often well-to do New Age boomers. He has
several web sites, an e-magazine, his own publishing house, and at least
9 books and 4 videotapes to his credit. He is constantly on the road, touring
North America, Europe, Australia, South Africa, the Pyramids, and elsewhere.
In the last five years he has spoken in Vancouver as many times, and if
the audiences have not been as large as the 450 he claims turned out to
hear him in Toronto last October, the fact remains he hopes to fill the
Vogue Theatre on March 19. It's a large milieu that can afford the hefty
prices Icke charges -- up to $67 to attend a lecture, forty to fifty dollars
for videotapes -- and that generates a sizeable income for Icke and his
message of conspiracism, fear and hate.
-
- To organize all this, Icke has developed an international
network of people who work with him and for him. They book the dates, churn
out the posters and press releases, do the advance work, pick him up at
the airport, get him to the hotel, introduce him, and get him back to his
flight on time. They also show clearly why David Icke is a dangerous man,
because they underscore his politics in an unmistakable way.
-
- Icke is undeniably a flake, and a world-class flake,
but his danger comes from his alliances as well as his politics. And it's
the far right who handle this man, who package and promote and present
his message across Canada and around the world.
-
- Take Joseph Duggan. Duggan is the proprietor of Strong
Eagles Productions, the company organizing Icke's current Vancouver speaking
engagement. Duggan makes his living in part from organizing B.C. speaking
engagements for a string of conspiracy theorists and famous personalities
of the extreme right like Glen Kealey, Cathy O'Brien, Len Horowitz and
others. Duggan also used to be the health editor of Shared Vision until
last year, which has itself advertised tours by Icke and hosted speeches
by him as well. Interspersed with monthly columns on health foods and natural
healing, Duggan's writings in Shared Vision also promoted the far right
anti-government activist Murray Gauvreau , Colorado militia supporter Suzanne
Harris , and the notorious Glen Kealey.
-
- In March 1997, Duggan's column featured the use of extensive
quotations from the book "War Cycles, Peace Cycles" by American
writer Richard K. Hoskins. Hoskins has been denounced as "a virulent
anti-Semite who is a leading ideologue of the Christian Identity movement"
by no less a source than Conrad Black's National Post. When Aryan Nations
member Buford Furrow was arrested in Los Angeles last August after shooting
and wounding five people at a Jewish community centre and murdering a Filipino
postal worker, police found a copy of "War Cycles, Peace Cycles"
in his car.
-
- Icke's books and videos are also distributed by an organization
in Salmon Arm, B.C. called The Preferred Network. The Preferred Network's
web site advertises at least four of Icke's books and the same number of
videotapes, as well as an extensive selection of U.S. and Canadian conspiracy
materials covering the traditional themes particular to the far right:
the government coverup of the Oklahoma City bombing, "The 10 Secrets
Revenue Canada Doesn't Want You To Know", "Humanity's Extraterrestrial
Origins", the AIDS coverup, the Ebola coverup, the Lockerbie coverup,
the PanAm 800 coverup, "Satanism And The CIA", and Kari Simpson's
expose of the gay agenda in B.C. schools.
-
- David Lethbridge, director of the Salmon Arm Coalition
Against Racism, has described the organizer of The Preferred Network in
the following way: "a well-attended demonstration opposing the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment was held [in the spring of 1998] in Salmon Arm,
B.C.... Working the fringes was Wes Mann, organizer of the Preferred Network.
Mann was handing out flyers for conspiracy advocates David Icke, Ted Gunderson
and Cathy O'Brien. Whenever he could, Mann would strike up a conversation
with one of the demonstrators, then write down their name and phone number.
I knew who Mann was. His Preferred Network catalog carries several dozen
books and tapes promoting the usual New Age fare: cancer cures, spiritualist
prophecies, UFO tales and so on. But much of the catalog consists of materials
promoting right-wing militias and right-wing conspiracy theories, and books
by notorious fascists and antisemites such as Eustace Mullins. I went over
to Mann, who did not recognize me, and began to question him. Within minutes
he was telling me that the MAI was the work of a conspiracy organized by
the mysterious "Black Nobility" and the "International Bankers".
The anti-Jewish code words were obvious. Soon Mann was telling me that
the antisemitic forgery The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion was authentic,
that the Nazi Holocaust had never occurred, that the contemporary Jews
were not Jews at all but descendants of the Turkish Khazars, and that the
fascist Eustace Mullins was "a brilliant researcher"."
-
- In Ottawa, Icke's key organizer is Tom J. Kennedy. Kennedy
was responsible for much of the organizational detail of Icke's October
1999 speaking tour in Ottawa, Toronto, and Windsor, Ontario, also acting
as his gofer and driver. But Kennedy's activities do not stop there. He
is an active supporter of Canada's DeTax movement a far right current that
imitates the tax-resistance strategies of the Freemen and other Christian
Patriot groups in the U.S. Kennedy's web site also promotes Glen Kealey's
conspiracist workshops, and other similar endeavours. And his politics
become even clearer when one reads the materials Kennedy has posted on
the internet over his own name. On January 18, 1999, he posted an article
attacking usury [a favourite code word among the far right for the international
Jewish Bankers Conspiracy]. He had originally found this article on a British
web site, and liked it so much he reposted it to his own list. The British
group that had written the article, Final Conflict, is one of Britain's
hard-core neo-nazi groups, whose web site carries articles entitled "Did
Six Million Really Die" and slogans reading "Long Live Death."
Four months later, on May 6, 1999 Kennedy posted an article on secret societies
he had picked up from the Hoffman Wire. The Hoffman Wire is a far-right
Holocaust denial organization based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, not far from
the headquarters of Aryan Nations.
-
- Kennedy's web site now carries an article "Fear
NOT - The Ultimate Label "Anti-Semitic", which clarifies his
endorsement of Icke's politics: "I have always been motivated to find
out the real reasons why particular researchers and historians get targeted
with the ultimate label "Anti-Semitic" and other lesser labels
such as "Neo-Nazi" and "Racist" Needless to say, I
was motivated to follow the information in search of reasons why David
Icke was being so labelled during his Ontario '99 tour.... Perhaps the
unfair labelling of researchers as "Anti-Semites" has a hidden
agenda to keep people from seeking the "truth?" Or could this
whole "Anti-Semitic" labelling be another "divide and conquer"
deflection to keep us busy while the real 10,000 year agenda of the Freemasons
and Bilderbergers is being completed? Just wondering??" In probability,
the labelling of Tom Kennedy as anti-Semitic might have more to do with
his stated support for Holocaust denier David Irving ("a meticulous
historical researcher"), or with his pal Ernst Zundel, who told Kennedy
in the early 1980's "Tom, you are writing about the usurious money
system which reaps the Financial Elite multiple millions annually. What
you are writing about is even more sacred than "the holocaust",
so be very careful for your well-being!!"
-
- David Icke's associations with the extreme right are
not confined to Canada, nor are they only a recent phenomenon. One of the
most ominous instances of this was documented in an article in the London
Evening Standard concerning Icke's 1995 speaking tour of Britain to promote
his newest book, The Robot's Rebellion. Journalist Mark Honigsbaum reported
that "what worries the Jewish community most is that Icke's veiled
anti-Semitic references are now attracting the attention of more sinister
British forces, in particular Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group which recruits
among football's violent hooligan fringe. The Jewish Chronicle has reported
how Combat 18 has taken to publicizing Icke's current tour in its internal
journal, Putsch. Citing Icke's recent lecture in Glastonbury, Putsch claimed
that Icke "spoke of "the sheep" and how the Zionist-operated
government, sorry, "Illuminati", uses them for its own ends."
The Combat 18 report continued: "He began to talk about the bug conspiracy
by a group of bankers, media moguls, etc. -- always being clever enough
not to mention what all these had in common"."
-
- Combat 18 is fascist. The numbers do not stand for "eighteen"
but for "one-eight", the first and eighth letters of the alphabet.
A and H, as in Adolph Hitler. C18 was for much of the 90's the most important
and the most violent of the British neo-Nazi movement, with a number of
murders to its credit. C18 has now fallen on hard times. Its main leader,
Charlie Sargent, is serving a life term for the first degree murder of
one of his own followers, and the group itself promptly split in two over
a bitter struggle over finances; but none of this prevented it from carrying
out two bombings in black and Bangladeshi neighbourhoods in London last
summer, or of being suspected in the bombing of a gay pub that killed two
and sent 60 people to hospital. Such are David Icke's friends and associates.
-
- Despite this record, Icke enjoys a surprising degree
of support from unexpected quarters. Connie Fogal, married to the long-time
leftie alderman Harry Rankin, has had her organization, the Defence of
Canadian Liberty Association, set up a literature table at one of Icke's
appearances. Paul Hellyer of the Canada Action Party attended Icke's last
Vancouver speech. Icke is listed as a contributor to the supposedly left-wing
tabloid The Radical, published in Quesnel and distributed widely throughout
B.C. And Icke's tour is being advertised in local New Age publications
Shared Vision and Common Ground.
-
- The fact is that some of what Icke says has a resonance
in these quarters. He's against world conspiracies, free trade, the MAI,
the WTO and corporate globalism. Many of his far right supporters are active
in other areas as well: cannabis legalization, alternative health, anti-corporate
activism, even support for native sovereignty struggles like Gustavsen
Lake. It's long overdue for the left, the environmental movement, feminists,
anti-WTO activists, lesbians and gays, and yes, even New Agers, to start
looking more closely at Icke and his friends. The advocates of Holocaust
denial and anti-Semitism will seldom if ever reveal their real agenda.
They prefer to work in the shadows, using coded language, building patiently
for a new and improved Reich. The threat they pose is no less real simply
because it doesn't register on the radar screen. Yet.
-
- All we need to do is look at Austria to see why these
politics have to be confronted, isolated and defeated, and the price we
will all pay if they are not.
-
- Will Offley is the former security coordinator of Everywoman's
Health Centre in British Columbia, a member of New Socialist Group, researcher
on Christian right and antichoice movements in Canada. This article will
appear in Canadian Jewish Outlook and appears here with the author's permission.
-
- * * *
-
- ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB) 750 La Playa # 730 San Francisco,
California 94121 To subscribe: afib-subscribe@igc.topica.com To unsubscribe:
afib-unsubscribe@igc.topica.com Inquiries: tburghardt@igc.org
-
- On PeaceNet visit AFIB on pol.right.antifa Via the Web
-- http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib.html
Archive -- http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib-bulletins.html
-
- ANTI-FASCIST FORUM (AFF) Antifa Info-Bulletin is a member
of the Anti-Fascist Forum network. AFF is an info-group which collects
and disseminates information, research and analysis on fascist activity
and anti-fascist resistance. More info: E-mail: aff@burn.ucsd.edu; Web:
http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff
-
- Order our journal, ANTIFA FORUM, cutting-edge anti-fascist
research and analysis! 4 issues, $20. Write AFF, P.O. Box 6326, Station
A, Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1P7 Canada
-
-
- Comment
-
- From Jeff Griffin KG0YE@aol.com
- 3-9-00
-
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- I know that I may be preaching to the choir in this case.
However, I would like to reiterate here what our founding fathers had to
say about men like David Icke. " We are endowed by our creator with
certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness." The word liberty was spelled out in the American Constitution
in the Bill of Rights. The first amendment gives citizens of the United
States freedom of speech. It is David Icke's right to speak whatever he
wishes, though, he may be a British subject. That right was endowed by
the creator.
-
- This latest attacke against Mr. Icke can only mean one
thing: He's rattled the cage of those he is pointing fingers at.
-
- Bravo! Live Free or Die!
-
- Best Regards,
- Jeff W. Griffin
-
- SIGHTINGS HOMEPAGE
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|