Yet now the US has a president who actively promotes conspiracy theories.
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Well he certainly isn’t a safe pair of hands now.
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I got to “visited a psychic that told him” and then my focus and interest trailed off to a nice game of hexonia.
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I’ve seen first 20 minutes of one of his interviews on coronavirus. It didn’t seem to me that he was just a nutter, it looked like his lies were very deliberate and careful. He used a lot of technical jargon, but his explanations of things like PCR or genetics were ridiculously wrong, and obviously designed and stated in such a way that for average consumer of conspiracy theories he would seem like a very knowledgeable person. It all seemed manipulative and calculated.
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Is promoting the Protocols of Zion, a known antisemetic forgery, “a force of love”? Is promoting antisemitism “a force of love”?
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He definitely appears to be dead serious about what he is saying. Not even a touch of irony like you might see in Alex Jones, or some other such character.
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I think of David Icke as being less harmful than Alex Jones. Plus he was an excellent goalkeeper in his time. And I think a very good looking man in his prime, if you like your men blond.
But he certainly had some very strange views. Sufficiently strange that I havn’t really followed his views after the lizard people stuff.
Exactly, and it is a tactic frequently seen from various snake-oil sellers, though Icke sells toxic ideas instead of snake oil. Note how he plays expert on everything he talks about, and speaks with absolute certainty. Here in Poland I’ve seen such tactics on sites selling “healing minerals”, these people try to make impression that they really believe in what they say, but it is a cynical scam, and quite profitable one.
People will die because of disinformation he spreads. Hate crimes will be committed due to antisemitism he spreads. I don’t see how he is less harmful than Jones.
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If Trump steals another election, fully expect Alex Jones to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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I suspect he’ll also be in line for a pardon too.
I’m sorry, but anyone who promotes antisemitism isn’t harmless. 
And this lack of taking people like Icke seriously as making conspiracy theories a part of the fabric of our political discourse will get us another 4 years of Trump and other right wing populists around the world. It’s a key part of how we get them in the first place…
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Relevance? OJ Simpson was a record-setting running back in the NFL, and, well, as it turns out, a murderer…
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Even harmless idiots are no longer harmless when given a pulpit. I’m privileged and honored not to have heard of this guy before. More people should be so lucky.
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Yeesh. I’d never heard of this guy, and couldn’t get through the video, but before the intro I’d thought his name was pronounced “ick-uh.” I’m going to stick with that.
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Just been listening to that.
It’s worth a listen to hear them compare their reporting and they spend the latter half of the pod discussing those two shit stains.
ETA: Jon Ronson mentions in that pod a recording he made for this american life that jones took an extreme disliking to which also may be of interest. You see many people commenting on jones as being a harmless kook back in the day who just got taken over by the mindworms over the years but listening to this it’s clear that he always was a violent, deranged thug with apparently a fetish for demonic possession(?). I choose to believe the multiple witnesses in this report rather than the angry egg, although the last 5 minutes is… dispiriting? I’m gonna say.
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YouTube put the Ick on Icke!
Knew a guy back in the 1990s who bought all his books when they were at least 30 bucks each. He bought into this completely and that was here in the USA. 30 dollars was a big hunk of change back then.
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I wish Colbert would do another BRAINFIGHT! episode. Tuck Buckford needs to up his game to stay in the race for nutty-est! I have heard about space-lizards wangdoodlry but had no idea this guy was the high priest of that particular rabbit hole.
Sad but unsurprised that no one on this thread seems to have any inkling that direct censorship of this sort is a threat to everyone’s free speech. As Glen Greenwald has argued since the beginning of his career, whenever governments (and large corporate platforms with unambiguous and deep ties to the U.S. national security state) want to silence dissent they always start with the most heinous and unsympathetic voices first. Hence, liberals who should know better blindly cheered when Alex Jones was effectively erased from the public commons (which are sadly in private hands), which cleared the way for a lot of anti-war and other activist voices to disappear from Facebook, YouTube & Twitter.
Caitlin Johnstone covers the issue here: Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke)
As the journalist Matt Taibbi said recently: “The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.”
