Icke

Last night, I was channel hopping through some of Sky’s more esoteric channels, and landed upon Controversial TV (channel 200), part way through a two hour interview with David Icke (the show was appropriately called Now That’s Weird).  I, of course, started recording immediately (the joy of Sky Plus).

I’ve been intrigued by David Icke’s ability to go from Wogan Son-Of-God humiliation, to peddler of 12-foot lizard conspiracies (whilst gaining a whole bunch of followers).  I even bought one of his books a few weeks ago (from a charity shop), just to see if I could actually get through it – I’ve not attempted it yet, but I’ll let you know how I get on.  It probably won’t surprise you, however, to learn that I think he’s talking complete bobbins.

It only took a few minutes of watching the interview to realise that although a lot of words were coming out of his mouth (and I mean a lot), there was no actual meaning behind any of it.  I almost gave up on it a few times (to be fair, I still haven’t watched it all yet), and it would be very easy for me to sit here and mock.  But , I won’t.   Amazingly, I did get something from the show, other than a headache.

It was quite easy to draw parallels with Ickes’ work and the creation of a new religion.  You start with a few facts, in his case stuff like: governments lie, the rich/powerful try and hang on to their power, and that nepotism is rife amongst the ruling classes.  These few threads of truth are then spun in to an all encompassing tapestry of bullshit.  Like a bad scientist, you can find plenty of anecdotal evidence to support your claims, and conveniently ignore anything contradictory.  The happy consequence of creating this explanation of the world is that it provides some nice succinct answers to why life isn’t always that great, and people are happy to believe in something that gives them answers whether it makes sense or not.  The followers then assist their leader by providing more ‘evidence’ and information to feed in to the over-arching theories, which become so complex that if you believe in the slightest, then they seem compelling.  And then they feel the need to spread the word and the cycle continues.  Conversely, for anyone who doesn’t believe it looks completely empty and nonsensical.

More importantly though, I had intended to title this post with some kind of pun on Ike and Tina Turner.. but I couldn’t think of anything appropriate that rhymed with Tina Turner.  I’m gutted.