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![The earliest monastery was constructed by the Byzantines in the 6th century CE above the cave traditionally said to be that where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating during the temptation of Satan,[2][3] about three kilometers northwest of Jericho](http://web.archive.org./web/20110425133721im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/0d/3a/11a80b17c7a5dd883bea697e2411_grande.jpg "The earliest monastery was constructed by the Byzantines in the 6th century CE above the cave traditionally said to be that where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating during the temptation of Satan,[2][3] about three kilometers northwest of Jericho")
Generally, those Satanists who believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of Satan are linked into the belief system of today's Judeo-Christian religion, as they believe in the same theology presented in the Hebrew Bible. Satan, also called Lucifer by many Christians, first appeared here as an Angel who challenged the religious faith of humans and the rule of Yahweh. In the Book of Job he is called "the Satan" (meaning "the accuser") and acted as the prosecutor in God's court. A character named "Satan" was described as the cosmic enemy of the Lord and temptor of Jesus within many of the Gospels of early Christians. This character is the bringer of Armageddon and Apocalypse as featured within the Book of Revelation. Religions inspired by these texts (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) have typically regarded Satan as the adversary or enemy , but extensive popular redactions and recompositions of biblical tales have inserted his presence and influence into every aspect of adversarial role back to the Creation and Fall. By Christians and Muslims especially, the figure of Satan was treated variously as a rebellious or jealous competitor to human beings, to Jesus, and characterized as a fallen angel or demon ruling the penitential Underworld, chained in a deep pit, wandering the planet vying for souls or providing the impetus for all worldly travesty. At points during the development of the Christian religion, Satan became its outspoken enemy, and this served the interests of all those who would use this to their advantage, inclusive of those who fashioned or recomposed the mythos of Satanism. Additionally, particularly after the European Enlightenment, some works, such as Paradise Lost, were taken up by Romantics and described as presenting the Biblical Satan as an allegory representing a crisis of faith, individualism, free will, wisdom and enlightenment. Those works actually featuring Satan as a heroic character are fewer in number, but do exist; George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain included such characterizations in their works long before religious Satanists took up the pen.
, often seen as a symbol of Satanism.]] Anti-witchcraft laws such as the British Witchcraft Act 1735 (repealed 1951), reflected public sentiment against witchcraft and Satanism.
Although the public practice of Satanism began in 1966 with the founding of the Church of Satan, some historical precedents exist: a group called the Ophite Cultus Satanas was founded in Ohio by Herbert Arthur Sloane in 1948. Inspired by Gnosticism and Gerald Gardner's Wicca, the coven venerated Satan as both a horned god and ophite messiah.
A particular antique Norwegian grimoire, in contrast to other Christian-oriented magical texts which describe Satan as an inferior spirit to be enslaved, contains a spell wherein the magician is instructed to renounce God and the Holy Spirit, and "completely swear to Lucifer, ruler of the Dark Abyss". The text itself claims to be originally from a manuscript in Wittenberg, similar to the many occult chapbooks pseudonymously ascribed to Doctor Faustus.
There was also a late 17th century French moral panic against alleged satanism during the Poison Affair (1675–1682), which occurred during the reign of Louis XIV and dealt with accusations of widespread poisonings, infanticide and forgery, presided over by an alleged satanic social network, which had no actual substance but reflected the aforementioned pre-Enlightenment popular religious anxieties.
Modern Satanist groups (those that appeared after the 1960s) are widely diverse, but two major trends are Theistic Satanism and Atheistic Satanism. Theistic Satanists venerate Satan as a supernatural deity. In contrast, Atheistic Satanists consider themselves atheists, agnostics, or apatheists and regard Satan as merely symbolic of certain human traits. This categorization of Satanism (which could be categorized in other ways, for example "Traditional" versus "Modern"), is not necessarily adopted by Satanists themselves, who usually would not specify which type of Satanism they adhere to. Some Satanists believe in God in the sense of a Prime Mover but, like Atheistic Satanists, still worship themselves, due to the deist belief that God plays no part in mortal lives.
Despite heavy criticism from other religious groups, there are signs that Satanistic beliefs have become more socially tolerated. For instance, Satanism is now allowed in the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces, despite much opposition from Christians, and, in 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States debated over protecting the religious rights of prison inmates after a lawsuit challenging the issue was filed to them. The number of practitioners of Satanism has also been found to be on the rise in Poland during recent years, despite Poland's long reputation as Europe's most devoutly Catholic country.
Luciferianism is often identified as an auxiliary creed or movement of Satanism, due to the common identification of Lucifer with Satan. Some Luciferians accept this identification and/or consider Lucifer as the "light bearer" and illuminated aspect of Satan, giving them the name of Satanists and the right to bear the title. Others reject it, giving the argument that Lucifer is a more positive and easy-going ideal than Satan. They are inspired by the ancient myths of Egypt, Rome and Greece, Gnosticism and traditional Western occultism.
Our Lady of Endor Coven, also known as Ophite Cultus Satanas (originally spelled "Sathanas"), was a satanic cult founded in 1948 by Herbert Arthur Sloane in Toledo, Ohio. The group was heavily influenced by gnosticism (especially that found in the contemporary book by Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion), and worshipped Satanas, their name for Satan (Cultus Satanas is a Latin version of Cult of Satan). Satanas (or Satan), was defined in gnostic terms, as the Serpent in the Garden of Eden who revealed the knowledge of the true God to Eve. That it called itself "Ophite" is a reference to the ancient gnostic sect of the Ophites, who were said to worship the serpent.
The Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey.
The First Satanic Church was re-founded on October 31, 1999 by Karla LaVey to carry on the legacy of her father, Anton LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible. On Walpurgisnacht, April 30, 1966, Anton LaVey founded the "The Satanic Church" (which he would later rename "Church of Satan"). After his death in 1997 the Church of Satan was taken over by a new administration and its headquarters was moved to New York.
LaVey's daughter, the High Priestess Karla LaVey, felt this to be a disservice to her father's legacy. She re-founded the Satanic Church and continues to run it out of San Francisco, California, much in the same way as her father had run the organization when he was alive.
Setianism, in theory, is similar to theistic Satanism. The principle adored deity of Setianism is the ancient Egyptian god Set, or Seth, the god of adversary. Set supposedly is the Dark Lord behind the Hebrew entity Satan. Set, as the first principle of consciousness, is emulated by Setians, who symbolize the concept of individual, subjective intelligence distinct from the natural order as the "Black Flame."
The Order of Nine Angles (ONA) is a purported secretive Satanist organization mentioned in books that detail fascist Satanism. They were initially formed in the United Kingdom and rose to public note during the 1980s and 1990s. Presently, the ONA is organized around clandestine cells (which it calls traditional nexions) and around what it calls sinister tribes.
Historically, primarily in Christian European civilization over the centuries, but also in Muslim countries (for example, the Yezidis), some people or groups have been specifically described as worshipping Satan or the Devil, or of being devoted to the work of Satan. The widespread preponderance of these groups in European cultures is in part connected with the importance and meaning of Satan within Christianity. When viewing the historical development of the phenomenon of Satanism in the list below, it becomes evident that, while the earlier Christian examples may reflect the goals of the Catholic Church to overcome pagans and heretics (or to dispose of opponents, as was the case with Urbain Grandier), the later examples (at least from the time of the Marquis de Sade onwards) clearly express an open hatred, to the point of sacrilege and blasphemy in some cases, towards Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular.
Some of the main personalities and groups that have stood out over the centuries, are:
Glen Benton, vocalist and bassist of the band Deicide, once openly claimed to be a practitioner of Theistic Satanism, and has spoken publicly on numerous occasions to profess staunch anti-Christian sentiment. Mercyful Fate singer King Diamond has also openly admitted to practicing Satanism, which is widely and explicitly present in the album Don't Break The Oath. The late and controversial Dissection frontman Jon Nödtveidt, strongheartedly spoke about his "chaos-gnostic" satanic beliefs, being a member of the Misanthropic Luciferian Order, and claimed his band and music being sonic (satanic) propaganda devices. Norwegian black metal artists such as Euronymous from Mayhem and Infernus from Gorgoroth have also identified themselves as Satanists and actively promoted their beliefs. Numerous church burnings that covered parts of Norway in the early 1990s were also attributed to youths involved in the black metal movement, which included people claiming to have theistic Satanic beliefs and strong "anti-LaVeyan" attitudes. However, the legitimacy of such actions as Satanic endeavors, rather than simply rebellious actions done for publicity, is something that has been doubted by even those who contribute to the genre.
Rapper Jay-Z has also been accused of Devil Worship; conspiracy theorists say his "Roc hand Sign" is really a representation of the All Seeing Eye. The rapper denied these rumors.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
David Vaughan Icke (born April 29, 1952) is an English writer and public speaker best known for his views on what he calls "who and what is really controlling the world". Describing himself as the most controversial speaker and author in the world, he has written 16 books explaining his position, dubbed New Age-conspiracism, and has attracted a substantial following across the political spectrum. His 533-page The Biggest Secret (1999) has been called the conspiracy theorist's Rosetta Stone.
Icke was a well-known BBC television sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, when he had an encounter in 1990 with a psychic who told him he was a healer who had been placed on Earth for a purpose. In April 1991 he announced on the BBC's Terry Wogan show that he was the son of God, and predicted that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes. The show changed his life, turning him practically overnight from a respected household name into an object of public ridicule.
He continued nevertheless to develop his ideas, and in four books published over seven years—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)—set out a moral and political worldview that combines New-Age spiritualism with a passionate denunciation of what he sees as totalitarian trends in the modern world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.
Some of Icke's theories have attracted the attention of the far right and the suspicion of Jewish groups; for example, he has argued that the reptilians were the original authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 1903 Russian forgery purporting to be a plan by the Jewish people to achieve world domination. Icke strongly denies there is anything antisemitic about this claim. He was allowed to enter Canada in 1999 only after persuading immigration officials that when he said lizards, he meant lizards, but his books were still removed from the shelves of Indigo Books, a Canadian chain, after protests from the Canadian Jewish Congress. Icke's problems in Canada became the focus in 2001 of a documentary by British journalist Jon Ronson, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews.
After the war, Beric got a job in the Gents clock factory. The family lived in a slum terraced house on Lead Street, near Wharf Street in the centre of Leicester. When Icke was three, they moved to a housing estate known as the Goodwood, one of the massive 1950s council estates the post-war Labour government built, their new home just across the road from the hospital. The family had nothing. "To say we were skint," he wrote in 1993, "is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole." He remembers having to hide under a window or chair when the council man came to collect the rent—after knocking, the rent man would walk round the house peering through the windows to see whether anyone was at home. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told him to hide, and Icke writes that he still gets a fright when he hears a knock on the door.
He was always a loner, and felt different from other children, spending hours playing by himself with little steam trains that he had, and preferring to cross the street rather than speak to anyone. He attended Whitehall Infant School, then Whitehall Junior School, where he spent most of his time feeling nervous and shy, often to the point of feeling faint during the morning assembly and having to leave before he passed out. The family doctor suggested a referral to a child psychologist, but his father put his foot down. He made no effort at school and failed at practically everything, but when he was nine, he was chosen for the junior school's football team. It was the first time in his life he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as the only way out of his poverty. He played in goal, which he writes suited the loner in him, and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain.
He met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa. She was working at the time as a van driver for a garage in Leamington. Shortly after they met, Icke had another one of the huge rows he had started having with his father—always a domineering man, his father was upset that Icke's arthritis was interfering with his football career—so he packed his bags and left home. He moved into a tiny bedsit and worked in a local travel agency during the day, travelling to Hereford in the evenings to practice or play football. He and Linda were married on September 30, four months after they'd met. Their daughter, Kerry, was born three and a half years later on March 7, 1975, followed by a son, Gareth, on December 12, 1981, and another son, Jaymie, on November 18, 1992.
His contract with the BBC was terminated in 1990 when he refused to pay his poll tax, a controversial new tax introduced by Margaret Thatcher. He ended up paying it in November 1990, but his initial announcement that he was willing to go to jail rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.
In February 1991, Icke travelled to Peru, where he visited the pre-Inca Sillustani burial ground near Puno. He writes that he felt drawn to a large mound of earth, at the top of which lay a circle of waist-high stones. As he stood in the circle, he felt his feet pulled to the earth as if by a magnet, just as he had experienced in the newsagent's in Ryde, and an urge to outstretch his arms. His feet started to vibrate and burn, his head felt as though a drill was passing through it, and he felt two thoughts enter his mind: first, that people will be talking about this in 100 years, and then, "it will be over when you feel the rain." He said his body started shaking as though plugged into an electrical socket and new ideas began to pour into him. Time became meaningless, he writes, and he has no idea how long he stood there, arms outstretched. Then it started raining, and the experience ended as suddenly as it had begun. He described it later as the "kundalini"—a term from Indian yoga describing a libidinal force that lies coiled at the base of the spine—exploding up through his spine, activating his brain and his chakras, or energy centres, triggering a higher level of consciousness.
He returned to England and began to write a book about the experience, Truth Vibrations, published in May that year. At a Green Party conference in Wolverhampton on March 20, 1991, before the book appeared, he resigned from the party, telling them he was about to be at the centre of "tremendous and increasing controversy," and winning a standing ovation from them after the announcement.
In March 1991, a week after resigning from the Green Party, he, his wife, and Deborah/Mari held a press conference to announce that he had become a "channel for the Christ spirit," a title conferred on him by "the Godhead." He said the world would end in 1997, preceded by a number of disasters. There would be a severe hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran. Los Angeles would become an island, New Zealand would disappear, and the cliffs of Kent would be under water by Christmas 1991. He said the information was being given to the three of them by voices and automatic writing. In In the Light of Experience (1993), Icke wrote that, at the time he gave the press conference, he didn't feel in control. He heard his voice predicting the end of the world, and was appalled by what he was saying. "I was speaking the words," he wrote, "but all the time I could hear the voice of the brakes in the background saying, 'David, what the hell are you saying? This is absolute nonsense'." His predictions were splashed all over the next day's front pages, to his great dismay.
One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into "Icke's a nutter." I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.
The BBC was criticised for allowing the interview to go ahead, Des Christy in The Guardian calling it a "media crucifixion." Wogan interviewed Icke again in 2006, acknowledging that his comments had been a bit sharp,
In The Robot's Rebellion (1994), Icke introduced the idea that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was first laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903, which supposedly presented a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world. The Protocols is the most influential piece of antisemitic material of modern times, portraying the Jewish people as cackling villains from a Saturday matinee, as Jon Ronson puts it, widely drawn on by the far right and neo-Nazi groups. Mark Honigsbaum writes that Icke refers to it 25 times in the book, calling it the "Illuminati protocols," and it is the first of a number of examples of Icke moving dangerously close to antisemitism, according to Michael Barkun of Syracuse University.
Sitchin writes that the reptilians came to Earth for its precious metals. Icke argues that the Anunnaki came specifically for "monoatomic gold," a mineral he says can increase the carrying capacity of the nervous system ten thousandfold. After ingesting it, the Anunnaki are able to process vast amounts of information, speed up trans-dimensional travel, and shapeshift from reptilian to human form. They use human fear, guilt, and aggression as energy in a similar way, part of the reason they organise human conflict. The more negative emotion we emit, the more the reptilians absorb. "Thus we have the encouragement of wars," he writes, "human genocide, the mass slaughter of animals, sexual perversions which create highly charged negative energy, and black magic ritual and sacrifice which takes place on a scale that will stagger those who have not studied the subject."
The Anunnaki have crossbred with human beings, the breeding lines carefully chosen for political reasons. He believes they are the Watchers, the fallen angels, or "Grigori," who mated with human women in the Biblical apocrypha. Their first reptilian-human hybrid, possibly Adam, was created 200,000–300,000 years ago. There was a second breeding program around 30,000 years ago, and a third 7,000 years ago. It is the half-bloods of the third breeding program who today control the world, more Anunnaki than human. They have an extremely powerful, hypnotic stare, the origin of the phrase to "give someone the evil eye," and their hybrid DNA allows them to shapeshift when they consume human blood. In Children of the Matrix, he expanded his description of those in charge, adding that the Anunnaki also bred with another extraterrestrial race called the "Nordics," on account of their blond hair and blue eyes, to produce a race of human slave masters, the Aryans. The Aryans retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes, a desire for top-down control, and an obsession with ritual, lending them a tendency toward fascistic militarism, rationalism, and racism.
Lewis and Kahn write that, with the Nordic hypothesis, Icke is mirroring standard claims by the far right that the Aryan bloodline has ruled the Earth throughout history. For Icke, Sumerian Kings and Egyptian pharaohs have all been Aryan reptilian humanoids, as have 43 American presidents and the Queen Mother, who he writes was "seriously reptilian." All have taken part in Satanic rituals, paedophilia, kidnapping of children, drug parties and murder, needed to satisfy their reptilian blood lust, which allows them to retain their temporary human form. The reptilians not only come from another planet, but are also from another dimension, the lower level of the fourth dimension, the one nearest the physical world. Icke writes that the universe consists of an infinite number of frequencies or dimensions of life that share the same space, just as television and radio frequencies do. Some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths, which is what psychic power consists of, and it is from one of these other dimensions that the Anunnaki are controlling this world—though just as fourth-dimensional reptilians control us, they are controlled, in turn, by a fifth dimension. The lower level of the fourth dimension is what others call the "lower astral dimension." Icke argues that it is where demons live, the entities Satanists summon during their rituals. They are, in fact, summoning the reptilians. Barkun argues that the introduction of different dimensions allows Icke to skip awkward questions about which part of the universe the reptilians come from and how they got here. The incidents allow the Elite to respond in whatever way they intended to act in the first place, a concept Icke calls "order out of chaos," or "problem-reaction-solution". There are few, if any, public events that are not engineered, or at least used, by the Brotherhood in their bid to sow division and centralise power. He suggested that the 1996 Dunblane massacre, for example, was organised by the Elite to strengthen gun laws:
Icke's criticism of Judaism, his reliance on the Protocols, questioning of the Holocaust, and claims about Jewish involvement in the "Global Elite," have attracted the attention of Jewish groups, who fear that his talk of lizards wanting to rule the world is a smokescreen for claims about Jews. Journalist Louis Theroux cautions against accusing him of antisemitism, arguing that it might not only be unfair, but may also lend a patina of seriousness to his ideas. Icke strongly denies that his reptiles represent Jews, calling the claim "friggin' nonsense." "There is a tribe of people interbreeding," he told Jon Ronson in 2001, "which do not, do not, relate to any earth race ... This is not a Jewish plot. This is not a plot on the world by Jewish people".
Icke introduced the idea in The Robot's Rebellion that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was first laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903, supposedly a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world. Parts of it were serialised in a Russian newspaper in 1903, and it was published in English throughout the U.S. in 1920 by The Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford's weekly newspaper, becoming mixed up with conspiracy theories about anti-Christian Illuminati, international financiers, and the Rothschilds, a powerful Jewish dynasty involved in banking. After it was exposed as a hoax, Michael Barkun writes that it disappeared from mainstream discourse until interest in it was renewed by the American far right in the 1950s.
Icke's use of the Protocols in The Robots' Rebellion was greeted with dismay by the Green Party's executive, who argued that his book promoted fascist and antisemitic views. They had allowed Icke to address the party's annual conference in 1992, despite the controversy over his "son of God" interview, but in September 1994 they decided to deny him a platform. Icke wrote to The Guardian protesting the party's decision, denying the book was antisemitic, and arguing that racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind were horrific and ridiculous, but in the same letter, he insisted that whoever wrote the Protocols "knew the game plan" for the 20th century. Barkun argues that Icke is trying to have it both ways—offended by the allegation of antisemitism, while "hinting at the dark activities of Jewish elites," Icke explicitly blames a ruling Jewish clique for the first and second world wars and the rise of Hitler—and indeed writes that Hitler's father was a Rothschild—and in And the Truth Shall Set You Free, he appears to flirt openly with Holocaust denial. Alick Bartholomew of Gateway, Icke's former publisher, told journalist Mark Honigsbaum in 1995 that an early draft of the book contained material questioning the Holocaust, and that Icke was dropped because of it. The September 2004 edition still contains material in chapter seven that is arguably revisionist. Sam Taylor writes in The Observer that, having read the chapter in question, he does not believe Icke is antisemitic, but argues that he is "tapping into a seriously paranoid, aggressive strain in U.S. society."
Honigsbaum writes that Combat 18, the British neo-Nazi group, publicised a 1995 talk Icke gave at Glastonbury in its magazine, Putsch. The talk was understood as antisemitic both by Combat 18 and by the Isle of Avalon Foundation, the New Age group that had promoted Icke's tour, which not only disowned him, but started handing out leaflets in protest at his presence. Perhaps unfairly projecting its own views onto Icke, Putsch wrote that Icke had talked about "the big conspiracy by a group of bankers, media moguls etc.—always being clever enough not to mention what all these had in common." Icke dismisses Combat 18's attentions, writing that it is a front for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Mossad.
While his lecture in a downtown Vancouver theatre attracted an audience of 1,200—attended, according to Icke, by the head of the Hate Crimes Unit—his books were removed from Indigo Books, and several venues on his speaking tour were cancelled. Human rights lawyer Richard Warman, working at the time for the Canadian Green Party, took credit for much of this in an interview with Jon Ronson for the latter's documentary, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews (2001), in which Ronson catalogues the cancelled radio interviews and book signings that Warman appears to have engineered. In response, Icke's Children of the Matrix (2001) reportedly accused Warman of being an Illuminati "gatekeeper," and of working to stop the exposure of child abuse, which triggered a statement of claim from Warman.
According to Barkun, Icke has actively tried to cultivate the far right. In 1996, he spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—which mandates background checks on people who buy guns in the United States—including Kirk Lyons, a white nationalist lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux Klan. Barkun argues that the relationship between Icke, the militias, and the Christian Patriots is complex because of the New Age baggage Icke brings with him, and he stresses that Icke is not actually a member of any of these groups, but it is nevertheless true that Icke has absorbed the world view of the radical right virtually intact. "There is no fuller explication of its beliefs about ruling elites than Icke's," he writes. Icke regards Christian patriots as the only Americans who understand the truth about the New World Order, but he also told a Christian patriot group: "I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to replace it with."]] Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn see Icke as a spiritual philosopher, arguing that it's not clear he believes in the reptilians himself. They write that he has produced an extraordinary, all-inclusive narrative, a consolidation of all conspiracy theories into one massive project with unlimited explanatory power. There is an almost obsessive-compulsive element to his writing, they argue, whereby he ferrets out any minutiae he can find to support a narrative structure that allows him to pole vault from ancient Sumer to modern America in a way that "defies the laws of academic gravity."
His work cuts across political, religious, cultural, and socio-economic divisions, uniting the political left and right—they write that his lectures might see neo-Nazis and Christian Patriots sitting next to 60-something UFO buffs and New Age earth goddesses—and as such he represents a truly global counter-culture and should not, they argue, be dismissed as fringe. He has lectured in 25 countries, his books have been translated into eight languages, his website gets 600,000 hits a week, and his lecture tours attract thousands. The Biggest Secret has gone through six reprintings since 1999, and Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster is a top-five seller in South Africa.
They argue that the lizards may be allegorical, a Swiftian satire intended to demonstrate the emergence of a global fascist state. In Children of the Matrix, Icke writes that, that if the reptilians did not exist, we would have to invent them. "In fact," he says, "we probably have. They are other levels of ourselves putting ourselves in our face." He argues, "We are the reptilians and the 'demons' and, at the same time, we are those they manipulate because we are all the same 'I'." Lewis and Kahn make use of Douglas Kellner's distinction in Media Spectacle (1995) between a reactionary clinical paranoia, a mindset dissociated from reality, and a positive, progressive, critical paranoia, which uses the culture of suspicion to question and confront power. They argue that Icke displays elements of both, writing that what they call his "postmodern metanarrative" may be politically empowering, a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure with which to question what they see around them.
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Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:British television presenters Category:British sports broadcasters Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:UFO conspiracy theorists Category:British writers Category:Coventry City F.C. players Category:English footballers Category:Association football goalkeepers Category:Hereford United F.C. players Category:The Football League players Category:English occult writers Category:People from Ryde Category:People from Leicester Category:Independent politicians in England Category:English writers Category:English political writers Category:Environmental skepticism Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:Religious skeptics Category:Anti-globalist activists Category:Self-declared messiahs
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![The earliest monastery was constructed by the Byzantines in the 6th century CE above the cave traditionally said to be that where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating during the temptation of Satan,[2][3] about three kilometers northwest of Jericho](http://web.archive.org./web/20110425133721im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/0d/3a/11a80b17c7a5dd883bea697e2411_thumb.jpg "The earliest monastery was constructed by the Byzantines in the 6th century CE above the cave traditionally said to be that where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating during the temptation of Satan,[2][3] about three kilometers northwest of Jericho")
