Where the New Age meets the Third Reich: David Icke and the politics of madness

By Will Offley, willo@lynx.bc.ca, AntiFa Info-Bulletin, Research Supplement, 7 March 2000

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.

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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.