March 16, 2000

Something slightly different this week. As David Icke has arrived in Vancouver, and met with a fascist mob intent on silencing his right to speak, I thought it was appropriate to write on the issues of censorship and the freedom to hold alternative opinions.

Does a small group of people have the right to protest against a man who holds opinions with which they disagree? Of course they do. Do they have the right to threaten those who give him a platform? Fuck no. This week, legitimate protest was replaced by censorship through intimidation, setting an extremely dangerous precedent.

The issue needs to be addressed on the heels of David Icke's visit to Vancouver, and the subsequent cancellation of his book-signing at Chapters last weekend, as well as the cancellation of an interview he was scheduled to give on CFUN's Holistically Speaking. As of this writing, a second radio interview is in jeopardy, as is a book-signing on March 20 at the Future Beyond Intelligence store on Robson St. Even David Icke's own bought and paid for presentation at the Vogue this Sunday is still up in the air.

The frightening aspect of the anti-Icke campaign is just how easily he is being silenced. So far, the protesters haven't even protested. A few well-worded phone calls have done the trick. Pamela Barclay of Chapters told me "we felt the possibility existed that there would be confrontation. The decision was made (to cancel Icke's book-signing) to protect the safety of our staff and customers." Kevin Copping, General Manager of the Vogue, is similarly concerned: "my staff will be in danger," he said. The Vogue show will be cancelled, he added, "if we can foresee any danger to the public, attendees, or staff." Intimidation 1, Freedom of Expression, no score.

So what's the big outrage? Who can find offense with a man who claims that an extraterrestrial race of shape-shifting reptilians controls our planet? Why do they even take him seriously? As David Icke himself asks "if it's so ridiculous, why go to all the bother to discredit me?"

Surprisingly, Icke's sprawling conspiracy theory has drawn criticism from almost every political and religious group on the spectrum, and he's been accused of everything from being a new age flake to being an extreme-right militant fascist. Along the way he has fielded allegations of being anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-gay rights, and, generating by far the most controversy, anti-Semitic.

On the phone from Arizona, Icke answered each and every one of the allegations I laid before him. Some issues were plainly addressed: "It is the right of a woman to choose," he says straightforwardly. "Racism is horrific, utterly ridiculous," he adds, "I don't give a shit what your genetic background is, it's irrelevant." On gay rights he is equally blunt, "I am a passionate supporter of everyone's right to express their sexuality, whatever it may be."

As for his alleged connections to extreme-right militia groups, he says "absolute friggin' nonsense...I wouldn't use a gun to save my life. I would rather leave this life in peace than add to the violence and stay a little longer." In an article on his website, he adds "the mentality of Nazi groups...is a disgrace to any society which claims to be civilized."

So why the confusion? Why the campaign to cancel his speaking tour? Alan Dutton of the Canadian Anti-Racist Education and Research Society says that Icke is "repackaging old anti-Semitic conspiracies in new-age bottles." Harry Abrams of the League of Human Rights of B'nai B'rith goes further, claiming that Icke spreads "hard-core hatred...hate expression that, inevitably, becomes violence."

Again and again, Icke's detractors point to his reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document that Hitler used to discredit Jews. The Protocols speak of a Jewish conspiracy to control the planet through a world bank, world army and world government. Although historians believe that the Protocols are a forgery, Icke maintains that the move to a centralized fascist world government is true, and he can prove it. But his research also proves that it is not a Jewish conspiracy. "I have said over and over that the mass of Jewish people are the victims of this conspiracy, not the perpetrators. It is being orchestrated by bloodlines that operate through all races, especially, as I constantly point out, my race, the so-called Aryan race." To be exact, his latest book, The Biggest Secret, lays the blame on a race of extraterrestrials, so how anti-Semitic is that?

Yet straight answers don't satisfy those who wish to vilify him, as they continually misrepresent his theories. Local Icke antagonist Will Offley goes so far as to label him a neo-Nazi, warning "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."

Serious words, for sure, and strangely tinted with the same kind of paranoid delusion which Offley accuses Icke of peddling. Is there a vast underground of neo-Nazis waiting to take over? Who knows? Does Offley have the right to ask? Of course. By the same token, does David Icke have the right to wonder if we are, as he claims, heading towards a fascist global state? The answer should be obvious. If a race of shape-shifting reptilians are planning a fascist coup of planet Earth, I demand the right to hear about it. For those who think he is mad, Icke asks, "and what research have you done to see if this is true? None. Right. Just checking."

Strange also, that Icke is accused of neo-Nazism, when he continually lashes out against the horrors of Nazism and all fascist expressions that seek to control other humans, especially the kind of fascist expression that tries to silence alternative opinions. In case his critics haven't realized it, silencing your opposition with intimidation and the threat of confrontation is a classic fascist tactic.

After weighing the evidence, it's hard not to conclude that Icke is the victim of a good old-fashioned character assassination. But why? Icke has a pretty good idea: "there are very few people who could unite the leaders of Judaism, the leaders of Christianity, the leaders of Islam, the leaders of the Christian Patriots, the leaders of the left-wing Robot Radicals, the leaders of the Green Party, and the leaders of the far right Conservative parties. I am uniting all these forces in mutual condemnation of me because they have one thing in common: they are seeking to impose their will on others, and the very foundation of what I stand for is exposing and removing the imposition of another's will on another human being. And that's why you have the universal condemnation, and that's why they're turning on me."