-Caveat Lector-
http://www.kingston.ac.uk/cusp/Lectures/Thompson.htm
Gaia Anti-Christ and the Ex-Files:
A Trawl through the Cultic Milieu
Damian Thompson
5 March 1997
Kingston University
At the end of 1995 the radical Jewish magazine New Moon
printed a long and disturbing news feature under the
inspired headline "The Icke Man Cometh". The article,
billed as a "special investigation", began as follows:
"It is has been hard in recent years to ignore the
popularity of almost everything that comes under the heading
New Age. Yoga, meditation, Kabbalah, Buddhism, alternative
medicine, environmentalism, self-improvement and New Age
therapies have all gained in popularity, as have all other
fringe interests like UFOS and the paranormal. But during
the past year, a dark side to the New Age message of
sweetness and light has become increasingly clear."
According to the authors of the piece, Matthew Kalman and
John Murray, a small number of influential New Age leaders
are embracing conspiracy theories which are heavily
influenced by the racist ideology of the far right. The
article singled out David Icke, the former Coventry City
goalkeeper and BBC sports commentator whose public
declaration in 1990 that he was a son of God, and henceforth
would dress only in turquoise, furnished the media with
perhaps the most hilarious news story of the year. Well,
you can stop laughing, said Kalman and Murray: for in the
course of his eccentric spiritual pilgrimage, David Icke
has turned into a fully fledged New Age Nazi.
Kalman and Murray went on to quote from a book published by
Icke in 1994 called The Robot's Rebellion in which his
well-established Green views are overlaid by a fantastical
tapestry of far-right conspiracy theories. Icke's villains
are Jews, Freemasons, bankers, the FBI, the gun control
lobby and aliens; indeed, he describes "Jehovah, the
vengeful God of the Jews" as "quite possibly an
extra-terrestrial." The Robot's Rebellion sold so well in
New Age circles that it went into three editions; a year
later Icke followed it up with a book called ... and the
truth shall set you free, advertised as "the most explosive
book of the 20th century", in which he proclaims that
"almost every major negative event of global significance
has been part of the same plan by the All-Seeing Eye cult to
take over the planet via a centralised world government,
central bank, currency [Eurosceptics please note] and army."
Icke also describes this cult as "the Illuminati" and "the
Brotherhood", but it soon becomes clear that he is most
interested in its incarnation as "a global Jewish clique".
Icke's antisemitism is of an exotic variety, increasingly
well entrenched on the far right, which in addition to
blaming the Jews for the First World War and the Russian
Revolution, also holds them responsible for the worst
excesses of Third Reich, including the Holocaust. Icke
accuses Jewish bankers of funding Hitler's rise to power; he
urges his readers to take Holocaust revisionism seriously;
and explains how anti-semitic persecution is the creation
of "thought patterns in the collective Jewish mind...
They expect it; they create it."
Kalman and Murray's purpose in writing their article, which
they followed up with a cover story in the New Statesman,
was not just to expose the egregious Icke as a Neo-Nazi.
Their point was that his views are representative of a
significant strand of thought on the New Age movement.
In his books, Icke enthusiastically plugs and Australian
New Age magazine called Nexus which carries article by US
militia leaders and dabbles in Holocaust revisionism;
its circulation is 130,000, more than four times that of the
New Statesman. Compare, too, Icke's distinctive brand of
antisemitism with an article in the British New Age journal
Rainbow Ark on the subject of modern Israel. "When a person
has a strong hatred of another race," it says, "their higher
self often (karmically) makes sure they incarnate in that
race to balance them out, thus many of the worst kind of
Nazis have already incarnated in Jewish bodies, explaining
therefore some of the fireworks which are going on in
Israel." Rainbow Ark, incidentally, often held public
meetings at the Battlebridge New Age centre in London's
Kings Cross. When interviewed by Kalman and Murray, the
centre's organiser, Julie Lowe, said she personally believed
in the authenticity of the notorious antisemitic forgery
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As she explained:
"I met two old Jewish men at Hyde Park Corner one evening
who told me... that if they didn't get their way in the
things they wanted, they were able through Philadelphia in
America to pull the money out of every city in the world.
I've seen it happen in Sheffield, so I believe it."
New Age Nazis, as New Moon calls them, might seem too
contemptible and ridiculous to merit serious attention.
In fact, they g
