Was David Icke Right?
I don’t know. I’ve never read any of his books and not been told what it is that he may have been right about. However I have just finished watching about three quarters of a programme with that title. For those who may not know David Icke was a sports reporter with the BBC before he had a revelatory experience that some have said was a schizophrenic episode. I do not know the truth or otherwise of that claim. He is of course a charismatic and interesting man. In this programme he seemed to posit the idea of a global conspiracy that is genetic in origin. In other words a group, or groups, of people, that include the Royal Family (but not Harry – mmm) and the Bush dynasty in the States, control the world. These folk are called the Illuminati. They seek to create a global government, with a world army, and presumably bureaucracy and legal system. He doesn’t describe the jurisprudence of this legal system or the structure of the proposed bureaucracy. He believes that this will be precipitated by a way of a contrived war. This war will (and indeed does) include an Islamic uprising and China. The UN will be overwhelmed and chaos will ensue. He also predicts the hurricanes and so on. He is quite animated about “labeling”. He is alluding to semiotics of language here and the power of discourse. I’m not sure what he’s read but I have to say that lot of what he is saying has been written about before. I have been reading Derrida, Foucault, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and so on recently and these chaps do seem to have considered all of these possibilities in various ways. Of interest to me personally is the use of words, discourse and language to shape thought and thus behaviour. He calls people like doctors, lawyers, teachers and reporters “repeaters”. In other words they repeat what they have learnt to trick us all. He seems to have the idea that there is a great grand narrative that these people are reading from and “repeating” in order to con us all. He argues that there is the reality of existence and an alternative depiction of it in the media. The media is of course controlled by the Illuminati. I’m guessing language is as well. Lyotard and others have considered these ideas of course and called it “postmodernism”. This in turn has a strong grounding in the ideas of the post structuralists and the deconstructionist approach towards literature. Icke’s scepticism at the depiction of reality is nothing new here. Kurt Vonnegut and many others have written on the dubious (in their view) nature of history and historicism in the canon.
He seems to be of the view that he is some sort of prophet. He may well be. On the other hand he may be a classic example of the simulacra that Lyotard considers in “The Postmodern Condition”. He is in fact a creation of the very media that he now derides, indeed he worked within it for twenty years and because of that gained a platform. His ideas and what he considers to be original thought are in fact nothing new, but creations of the media and philosophers, they are pieces of “knowledge” that he has assimilated over the years. Subsequent to what he calls his “Turquoise Period”, and what some call schizophrenia, he has distilled this input and has himself been transformed into a “repeater” and is simply repeating what he has subconsciously assimilated.
Nonetheless he is an interesting man and a charismatic speaker. Much of what he says is reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas of aliens and so on. Indeed he has some theory about reptiles, I didn’t catch it all but am guessing it’s as interesting as Hubbard’s ideas on Thetans.
It was well worth watching and respect to him for preaching this view. I agree with his theory of the World Government. But this is simply a natural progression for humans. After all humans are social animals, they live in herds and have a herd mentality. As the world becomes smaller, whether this be as a result of an Illuminati plot, reptile invasion or Thetans et al, it will be natural for there to be bigger and bigger government. The EU is an example of this process.
In short I would say that he is not an original thinker, however the way in which he preaches his ideas is original. His books have merit because they will make some conspiracy theorists think they have a champion. Of course how are they and we to know that David Icke is not an Illuminati placed man and nothing more than a “repeater”.
Then again, what is knowledge? What is truth? What is justice? What is virtue? What is reality? What is good?
Didn’t Socrates start the whole sorry business a couple of thousand years ago?
Philosophy is where it’s at, and well worth “repeating”.