"Love All The Sheeple" (Icke's Hicks Schtick)

 

 That was July 2015. I'd just been enjoying Icke's terrible 2009 lecture to the Oxford Union on Netflix and wanted to share the highlights, but wasn't sure how much of an introduction he needed, so gave up. I didn't bother watching his speech yesterday to the anti-mask crowd in Trafalgar Square, but from what I've read it was pretty similar to the Oxford one a decade earlier – except it didn't have slides, which is a shame because they were hilarious – so I'm finally posting it now. 

 

 

 If any reader still doesn't know who David Icke is, in my 2015 draft I recommended "this excellent wikipedia entry charting Icke's progress from footballer turned sports-presenter, turned Green-Party-figurehead, via an encounter with Brighton psychic Betty Shine, to the turquoise-favouring Way turned Truth turned Light immortalised in this tender interrogation on Wogan", then went on to explain that Icke was "big with people who get bored by the news. Far better-constructed alternate histories are becoming more and more mainstream, but fortunately for Icke the news has also become more and more boring, so his stock remains high..." which is not an observation that dated well. I've no idea why I didn't think his stock would be at least as high in Interesting Times. 

 

 I've no idea how much his consistent but blurry narrative of world conspiracy owes to Betty Shine, but for over three decades it's remained large enough to accomodate both genuine government cover-ups and the belief that former Prime Minster Ted Heath was a giant lizard. To quote Icke's Oxford lecture: "Pyramids within pyramids, like a series of Russian Dolls." Imagine that... No, I can't either. Here's another quote of his to lillustrate the kind of level we're working at: "Jimmy Carter manipulated the Soviet Union into attacking Afghanistan which blew up leading to Al-Quiada and all that lot." The lecture's now on youtube, not Netflix, and honestly I can't remember if I'd still recommend it but here's what you missed...

 

  "Then he started talking about depleted uranium," I wrote in 2015, "and if I'm honest it gets less funny, because – yes – what's important is not automatically common knowledge... Like David Brent playing Simply The Best, he closes with another Bill Hicks routine, the closing speech from Hicks' swansong Revelations, a beautifully judged meditation that reality is just a ride delivered by a man who knew he was dying. But Icke's done nothing to earn this observation and robs its punchline of any comic worth." That's what I wrote in 2015. My biggest revelation of the evening though was this: "Icke is as good a proof as any of the theory he champions, believing is seeing. Or, less clumsily, it's the ideas we never question that keep us stupid. He's not insane. He's just dumb." That's maybe not such a novel insight in 2020.

"Fucking magnets, how do they work?" Simpler times. Please wear a mask.