Research Note: The Irrelevant Reptilians

By Will Banyan – Copyright © 18 May 2008

Up until the release of The Biggest Secret in 1998, it seemed doubtful that David Icke could top his performance from 1991 when he attracted widespread ridicule for apparently declaring himself the “Godhead”, as part of his “spiritual” transformation. Yet, with The Biggest Secret, Icke not only offered a complex conspiracy theory on how and why Princess Diana died, but he offered a new overarching explanation for why life is so awful on planet Earth: it was the fault of “shape-shifting reptilians” from the “lower-fourth dimension.”

It was a remarkable revelation, one that not only succeeded in attracting the ire of his fellow conspiracists; but also provided fodder for journalists, which they feast on to this day, much to Icke’s obvious irritation. Although, as a reporter for the Daily Echo (April 7, 2008) recently discovered, Icke still believes that he will be vindicated by history:

When asked if he is referring to the reptilians, I get a very sharp response.

“No. I’m not talking about reptilian stuff because I only talk about that when there is a lot of time that can be given to it,” [David Icke] retorts with a loud clunk of his soup-spoon.

“It’s like me, a few centuries ago, saying to you, the Earth’s round it ain’t flat, all right?

“You could go away and say (adopting a thick Midlands accent) he says the Earth is round it’s not flat, he’s mad because if it were round we’d fall off the bottom, ugh he’s an idiot.”

Reverting to his normal, more measured tones, he continues: “But if you brought into that, which was not known at the time, the law of gravity, suddenly what appeared to be ludicrous becomes, oh I can see how it’s done now’.

“I’m a dot connector so I have to write about many subjects and connect them together. And you can only understand the reptilian side of this by doing that, so I don’t talk about that in the media because it’s a waste of time.”

In addition to the ridicule, much comment has also been given about the lack of originality about Icke’s reptilian thesis. For example, a long-time Icke foe, Ivan Fraser of the “Truth Campaign” suggests that former aerospace researcher Brian Desborough manipulated Icke into accepting the reptilian thesis. We might also note that Icke’s possible debt to the theories of certain Christian writers from the 1960s who, in anticipation of the “End Times,” believed that a cursed reptilian-humanoid race, the Cainites, would emerge to fight on behalf of Satan. But if we look beyond those criticisms and the smug jibes of journalists, there are still some substantial comments to be made about Icke’s reptilian shape-shifter diversion.

First, there is Icke’s somewhat shaky body of evidence. Icke’s explanations in The Biggest Secret for the ancient origins of the Reptilians rest on a considerable body of conjecture, mostly his overly imaginative and presumptuous re-interpretation of ancient legends and religious myths about snake-gods, reptilian spirits and other scaly creatures as reflecting historical truths. This is carried on in Children of the Matrix to a more absurd degree with ancient imagery of lions, dogs, wolves (“wolf people”), cats, goats and cattle – all mammals by the way – either for religious or merely illustrative purposes all casually identified by Icke as “classic symbols of the serpent cult” (pp.113, 129, 156, 161).

His explanations in both books tend towards the incoherent at times as well, with Icke endorsing three contradictory explanations in The Biggest Secret (p.22) for the origins of the Reptilians. Icke has no problem identifying the Reptilians as both physically real and spiritual entities operating from the “lower fourth dimension”, as well as describing them as being of both extra-terrestrial and inner-terrestrial origin. Then there is the mish-mash of terminology about Reptilians, “reptilian-Anunnaki”, “Nordics”, “Nordic-Reptilian” hybrids and “reptilian-mammalian hybrids” and so on that only add to the confusion.

It gets no better with the contemporary evidence of the reptilians. In The Biggest Secret and his interview with Spectrum magazine (August 1999) Icke reports having met “hundreds and hundreds of people…from around the world” who have personally witnessed prominent people shape-shift into seven to nine-feet tall lizards. Yet he is able to name only two alleged witnesses – Cathy O’Brien and Arizona Wilder – and cite the claims of Christine Fitzgerald, who claims that the late Princess Diana told her of such things. Icke gives no indication of having thoroughly investigated such claims; merely that he is willing to believe them without question. In Children of the Matrix Icke manages to name a few more alleged witnesses but again chooses belief over verification. Icke, though, has no qualms about disparaging scepticism of these extraordinary claims with a lecture about how “humanity polices itself…[to] suppress the very information that would give us a fix on what is really going on ” (p.249). But fortunately for the reader, Icke has rendered the reptilian issue irrelevant any way…

This leads us into the second observation, and perhaps the most important, and that is why Icke even bothered to introduce the reptilians in the first place – though a cynic might suggest a desire to entertain his readers and thus sell more units, but such an observation would surely be mistaken – given that he repeatedly asserts that whether the cabal behind the N.W.O. are reptilians or not is irrelevant. Where, I hear irate Icke fans and groupies ask, does Icke do this? Why in his books and interviews of course. Consider Icke’s impassioned plea in 1999 that we good people ought not take umbrage at every Reptilian we happen upon:

…I want to emphasize this, Rick, very, very strongly-when I talk about reptilians, I am not talking about all reptilians. Just as when we talk about the Illuminati, we’re not talking about people in physical form. I’m talking about a particular group. I’m sure the reptilian form is a massive constant across great chunks of this galaxy and beyond, and I’m certainly not saying that anyone in reptilian form-any time anyone sees anyone in reptilian form, and there are a lot of people who do-and say, “I didn’t get bad vibes from them.” Quite right, because we’re not talking about ALL reptilians, we’re talking a group that appears to take a reptilian form because that’s how people keep seeing these people in power. So, I would emphasize that very strongly because we don’t want to get into this “good guys/bad guys” crap or we lose the plot again. The truth is never black or white; it’s always a shade a gray, it seems to me. (Spectrum Magazine, August 1999; emphasis added)

In the midst of this convoluted explanation, which also raises questions about whether Icke believes the reptilians to be real, we might find cause to applaud Icke’s commendable warning to us all not to condemn every reptilian-being we meet. Viewing this impressive commitment against racial stereotyping, one must weigh up the possibility that Richard Warman must be wrong about Icke’s alleged “racism.” Indeed, in Children of the Matrix Icke repeats his noble warning, in the name of racial tolerance, not to be prejudiced against all reptilian shape-shifters:

…it is important for me to stress here, and to keep in mind throughout this book, that I am not suggesting for a moment that all of these “Nordics” or “reptilians” have a malevolent agenda for humanity. Only that some factions of them do. (p.90; emphasis added)

Which again prompts one to ask why Icke introduced them in the first place if not all reptilians or Nordics are involved. After all Icke is manifestly incapable of producing any tangible evidence of the reptilians existence. But, contrary to his exhortation to readers to be tolerant of reptilian beings, he goes out of his way to identify, usually on the flimsiest of evidence, that most of the alleged conspirators are indeed “reptilians”, “reptilian crossbreeds”, “reptilian hybrids”, “Nordic hybrids”, “Aryan crossbreeds” and so on, suggesting that their evil deeds and plans are not the product of any “pure” human being…which might well count as a “racist” sentiment, so long as one believes the reptilians to be physically real.

But then we come the crux of it all, Icke’s shifting interpretation of the reptilians, from physically real, whether other dimensional or extra-terrestrial, to being “a group that appears to take reptilian form because that’s how people keep seeing these people in power.” Thus at the conclusion of Matrix Icke suddenly shifts the boundaries of what the “truth” is, yet again, inserting some post-modernist relativity into it. In place of what we might think is reality Icke assures us that once we enter “realms of multi-dimensional reality” we will discover that there is “no ultimate truth” merely “all the same energy expressing itself in infinite ways.” Which, Icke writes, basically means “What is true in my universe is not necessarily true in yours” (p.422). A revelation that helpfully, and inevitably, leads to the following admission:

If the reptilians and other astral manipulators did not exist, we would have to invent them. In fact we probably have. They are other levels of ourselves putting ourselves in our face. They are a level of our infinite self, one of our realities, that we are being challenged to face and transform. If we hate them we hate ourselves. They are our shadow, a part of ourselves that we do not want to face, acknowledge or admit to. While our shadow self is hidden from us, the reptilians will stay hidden and continue to covertly control. (p.423; emphasis added)

So Icke unsubtly shifts the goalposts, completely removing them from the field. Anything can be true, so if we cannot find physical evidence for the reptilians, despite all the “evidence” he produces suggesting they do live in our physical world, and his explicit arguments that they represent a malevolent alien force; we must also recognise them as spectral manifestations of our own inner evil. Recall Icke’s words: “we would have to invent them. In fact we probably have.” With multiple explanations – multiple “truths” – Icke is never wrong.

We are thus reminded of a scene from the classic British 1980s TV comedy Yes, Minister, with Bernard Woolley’s character questioning Sir Humphrey Appleby over how he could have possibly misled their Minister Jim Hacker, by providing information that proved wrong. Sir Humphrey’s explanation is instructive:  “I didn’t say it was true. I said ‘I understood it to be true.’ I may have misunderstood.” “So you don’t know it’s true?” asks Woolley. “I don’t know it’s not. It might be”, Sir Humphrey replies. “Anything might be!” reasons Woolley. “Exactly. Well done, Bernand,” Sir Humphrey responds encouragingly.

So to, it seems, in Icke’s world…

Ultimately with the reptilians either real or a manifestation of some flawed part of the human condition, we are left with a concept that, as a tool for investigating parapolitics, is utterly useless. It might work as a metaphor for the evils in this world, or a gimmick to sell books, but otherwise searching for lizard-people is a pointless distraction…