Co-opting the Left’s conspiracy theories, don’t make them Right
Twas fueled by conspiracy theorists, including Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon supporter fatally shot by police as she tried to breach a barricaded doorway. Meanwhile, federal investigators are still looking into the belief system of Anthony Quinn Warner, who made statements about a conspiracy of lizard people taking over the planet before the explosion that damaged 41 buildings and injured three people in Nashville, Tennessee, on Christmas Day.
Many are wondering why people are embracing such bizarre ideas. The notion of shape-shifting, blood-sucking reptilian humanoid aliens invading Earth to control the human race may sound like a cheesy sci-fi plot, but it actually has roots in anti-Semitic hostilities, going all the way back to the blood libels in Medieval Europe.
The world-ruled-by-lizard-people conspiracy rose to prominence in recent years through the writings of David Icke, a British sports reporterturned-conspiracy theorist. Icke would have you believe that a race of reptilian beings not only invaded Earth but that it also created a genetically modified lizard-human hybrid race which, he maintains, is busy plotting a worldwide fascist state. Icke claims this information was given to him by the Zulu Sangoma/traditional healer Credo Mutwa.
Allegedly, according to Icke this sinister cabal of global reptilian elites boasts a membership list that includes former President Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, the Rothschilds, Hillary Clinton and Mick Jagger. This nonsense is espoused by a variety of internet conspiracy-mongers, including far-right, Trump-loving QAnon adherents.
This outlandish trope has roots in the second half of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution and Darwin’s theories, along with the rumblings of war, disrupted time-honored traditional ways of life, leaving people unsettled and unsure what to believe. It emerged more strongly toward the end of the century, when anxieties about perceived outsiders, especially Jewish ones, were fueled by the waves of immigrants flooding urban centers in search of religious freedom.
A bohemian cluster of charismatic figures appeared on the scene as if by magic, claiming secret knowledge of world affairs. The writings of the Russian-born mystic Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, are an example of the ideology pervasive at the time, rife with cosmic secrets and mysterious knowledge — including her claim of an ancient race of dragon men from a lost continent detailed in her esoteric bible, “The Secret Doctrine,” published as two volumes in 1888.
Blood-sucking, once used freely in Europe as an accusation against Jews during the Black Plague – blaming them for death itself – is a common metaphor for greed, a trait often linked to Jews associated with banking. This associating Jewishness with greedy blood-sucking gained momentum as wealthy Jews, gained influence in society. Eventually, the paranoid notion that Jews, through their financial power and connections to royalty, would seize the opportunity to take over the world, helped drive the mounting anti-Semitism in Europe and America.
Does any of this sound familiar? Well, it should, because today’s social
media postings by conspiracy theorists bear the same traces of anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic tensions that show up over the course of history whenever
people feel betrayed by the elite class and fear loss of their own social and economic status.
In a 1970s book by two French jour
nalists, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, “The Morning of the Magicians” (Simon and Schuster 1972), reopened Pandora’s Box by romanticizing the notion for a new generation. The book is described as a modern alchemical manifesto, “illuminating” the intersection between science and mysticism, proclaiming “matter as a gateway of the spirit, that an objective appreciation of the material world is a means by which we may attain an awakened state of consciousness, the next step in human evolutionary destiny.”
According to its authors “The New Cosmology” that we are now living in is all about “creating consciousness” – “taking wisdom from masterminds behind early civilizations’ growth to connections between alchemy and modern physics and Hitler’s psychic potentials.” A precursor to New Age beliefs, “The Morning of the Magicians” touches on every conspiracy and cabal ever dreamed of as it waltzes through the centuries. From Egyptian Mystery Schools to Cathars in Avignon, it covers the gamut, including the infamous “Protocols of Zion” (see below) which continues to inspire these modern-day anti-Semites.
Icke, who once wrote a theosophical work about the origins of Earth (”Days of Decision”, published by Jon Carpenter, March 1, 1994) also endorses this anti-semitic forgery. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” appeared in 1903 and is suspected to have been created by the Russian Czar’s secret police in an effort to discredit Jewish Bolsheviks. Aleister Crowley, among others, helped circulate the pamphlet, which claimed to reveal a secret Jewish society conspiring to control the banks, media and, ultimately, the entire Earth. Even though it was quickly discredited as a forgery, the Nazis used it as propaganda.
The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1920, carried the news that it had been denounced by a conference of leading Jewish organizations as a “base forgery” and as a “recrudescence of medieval bigotry and stupidity.”
Icke denies hating Jewish people, and whether or not he is using the notion of reptilian invaders as cloaked anti-semitism, it is a fact that these ideas tend to circulate among neoNazis, Illuminati-conspiracy buffs and other groups insisting that we are being manipulated by sinister “puppeteers” who often just happen to be Jewish. Billionaire George Soros is a popular target; frequently depicted as a worlddominating reptile. For the past decade or so, this stuff was limited to a few dodgy New Age practitioners, ironically mostly belonging surprisingly to the Progressive Left, until resurfacing once again in a new and even more jumbled form, among the QAnon crowd.
These days when wrong is right and in is out, and no one seems to know which way is up, conspiracy buffs find themselves as confused as the rest of us. When filmmaker Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling For Columbine), the big daddy of current conspiracy chatter, appeared on Facebook Live a week or so ago to decry the conspiracy theorists planning an alleged armed march on all the Nation’s capitols, many found themselves scratching their heads. Wasn’t this the guy just telling us in technicolor not to trust our government?
History shows that when panic is rising and the masses feel betrayed by the wealthy elite class, scapegoats tend to be a thing, and if a few charismatic influencers are able to direct fears and grievances toward secret cabals, immigrants and religious groups, eventually, something, usually bad, is bound to happen.
Thankfully, others besides Moore appear to be waking up. Last week Twitter users were quick to point out that even Info Wars’ Alex Jones — who infamously claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax and believes the COVID19 pandemic has been simulated to “track and trace and control people”– dismissed the QAnon conspiracy theory in a video rant that went viral.
Hopeful as that may be, the real problems won’t change until people come to realize there is no “other,” we are all in this together, all responsible for this land we live on. Our wild projections may be just that, projections, and that it is always a better idea to avoid inane distractions by taking care of the things that matter – our neighbors and our Earth for starters.