Just prior to the Covid-19 medical emergency and lockdown, I embarked on the delivery of a module on the role of conspiracy theory in history, and recently had the opportunity to run the module again. The course sought to address the very difficult question of why so many people appear to believe that ‘secret’ forces are at work in the world and allow themselves to be seduced and conned by the claim that there is no such thing as ‘accident’ in history. One of the conspiracy theorists I covered on the module was the former footballer and Green activist David Icke, author of books such as And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995) and Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (2002).
A recent typical example of Icke’s output was The Trap: What it is, how it works, and how we escape its illusions, which was published in September, 2022. The book regurgitated some familiar Icke obsessions and nonsense. He claimed that there is a ‘Global Cult’ at work, which operates across frontiers and is pursuing a long-term ‘plan’ for total human control. Depressingly, one only has to have a quick glance at the many reviews of the book on the Amazon Books UK website and you can see that his army of supporters came out in force, heaping praise on the book and treating Icke as some kind of ultra-wise guru.
By coincidence, while I was undertaking some background research and developing my course materials for the conspiracy module, Icke (pictured right) was touring the UK with a special stage show, where he presented his controversial theories about the past and the present. This tour, which also functioned as a book-launch, had included a session in Edinburgh and a big event at the Troxy Theatre in London’s East End.
However, his tour/book launch did not go as smoothly as he had hoped. Two days after the London event, Icke was banned by Manchester United football team from holding ‘An Evening with David Icke’ at their Old Trafford stadium in Manchester. In a statement issued that the time, Manchester United had said: ‘The booking was made by a junior member of staff who was unaware of Icke and his objectionable views. The event has been cancelled’.
The decision to cancel Icke’s event came after complaints had been made by the UK’s Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and also from a Labour MP, Kate Green. Predictably, in comments made on his own Twitter account, Icke had said Manchester United was ‘a disgrace’ for cancelling his show ‘on the say-so of ultra-Zionist hate group and freedom-destroying Labour MP’. The reference to Zionism was telling, and I will explain why.
Icke’s Ideology
For those unfamiliar with Icke and his work, there is quite a disturbing history attached to him. Icke (b. 1952) is infamous for writing a series of long and turgid conspiratorial books which have become best-sellers among those drawn to such views. Each book ranges across a variety of topics and there is considerable use of a very selective version of history and key historical events. Coincidence in history is radically downgraded, and replaced instead with purpose, design and ‘plots’ as the most important factors in interpreting the major events of the past. Some of this ‘history’ has become notably strange. In particular, Icke has claimed that ‘interdimensional reptilian aliens’ operate behind the scenes, brainwashing and controlling the world’s governing elites and shaping history for particular ends.
Icke’s obsession with ‘reptiles’, however, as I explained to students in my module on conspiracy theory, was the result of a more coded language that he subsequently adopted when there was an outcry over one of his earliest books. In The Robots Rebellion (1994), Icke had made uncritical use of the Czarist anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (1903), which claims that the world is subject to manipulation and control by a secret ‘cabal’ of Jewish elders who meet annually. In the second edition of Robots Rebellion, this material was carefully edited out, but Icke’s general claim of a grand conspiracy at work across the globe remained. His books and sell-out talks have repeated this ‘global’ thesis ever since, in ever more bizzare and elaborate ways. In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic gave him even more opportunities to claim that a ‘global elite’ was deliberately using the mass vaccination programme to further their quest for world dominance.
Indeed, in recent years Icke has returned back to his earlier obsession with the Protocols, and now talks more boldly and explicitly about the book and about ‘Rothschild Zionists’ more generally. He has evidently decided that sufficient time has now elapsed since the huge row caused by The Robots Rebellion in 1994, and that it is now ‘safe’ again to push some classic conspiracy ideas about ‘Zionist’ puppet-masters and ‘secret’ forces operating behind the scenes. In one radio interview, for example (still available on YouTube), Icke put forward a detailed ‘history’ about the role of the Protocols and even linked the book to Allen Dulles and the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Dulles was supposedly a ‘front man of the House of Rothschild’. Icke’s version of the history of the Middle East would also have left a professional historian tearing their hair out.
A Brief History of Falsehood
As I pointed out in the sessions on my module, conspiracy theory, or ‘conspiracism’, has had a long and ugly history, with roots that can be traced right back to at least the time of the French Revolution, and to extravagant ideas about Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati. But it was during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that conspiracy theory really began to grow and gain ground, spreading major falsehoods about how the world works, and the Protocols was a classic example of such thinking.
In the early 1920s, the book was printed and distributed widely by the ‘Britons Publishing Society’, an extreme rightwing and highly anti-Semitic publishing group in the UK, created by Henry Hamilton Beamish (1873-1948). The Britons Society also exported many copies to other countries, and Hamilton, along with sympathisers and supporters of the Britons, helped translate and promote the Protocols in all corners of the world, including in the Middle East and Africa. The book was also taken up by the famous American motor manufacturer Henry Ford (1863-1947) in the USA, and by Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, especially by the Nazi movement’s main ideologue of ‘race’, Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946).
And the book did not disappear after the Second World War and the Holocaust. In fact, it has been reprinted on many occasions ever since, and there are now numerous versions available today on the internet. In fact, in recent years, the Protocols has been used by conspiracy theorists to ‘explain’ a diverse number of historical events, ranging from the death of Lady Diana in 1997 to ‘9/11’ in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003. The Financial Crash of 2008 was also (apparently) deliberately engineered by the secretive Elders of Zion to undermine the West and bring about a ‘New World Order’, with a ‘One World’ dictatorship policed by the United Nations from New York.
Inevitably, conspiracy theorists such as Icke have employed the Protocols to make a whole series of bizarre assertions about the recent Covid pandemic, alleging that ‘global financiers’ have made huge profits out of the ‘vax’ programmes, and that it has all been part of the sinister plot to eventually brainwash everybody and take over the world. Frankly, the fact that David Icke has himself been utilising the basic tenets of the Protocols once again speaks volumes about the man.
Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics
(Images: Wikimedia Commons)
Note: An earler version of this blog was published here in October, 2022
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