The Thoughts of Chairman Icke

Not everyone has high hopes of the Obama administration. David Icke, for example, has been warning his followers that, however different from this predecessor he might appear, the new president is basically just another creature of the Illuminati, or the extraterrestrial lizards, or whichever secret elite actually controls the planet. Indeed, in a long article posted on his website (which he is anxious to distribute as widely as possible) he fears that Obama may be even more dangerous than Bush. Mainly because people seem to like him. Whereas "Bush was a transparent idiot with no communication skills who needed massive fraud at the polls to get him officially 'elected'."

Icke is "dismayed" that so many people all over the world have been "duped by the mind-game called Operation Obama." Even many "with some understanding of the conspiracy" think the incoming president is better than Bush, he laments. When in fact, of course, he's far worse. As for Michelle Obama, Icke wouldn't trust her "to tell me the date in a calendar factory". Which strikes me as unnecessarily ungallant, even for a conspiracy theorist.

In Icke's view, Obama's campaign was one of successful manipulation and mind-control, unencumbered by actual policy. He's a blank canvas onto which voters can project ideals: his campaign "has been so successful because so many people live their lives in a permanent state of trance." He is a "blatant fraud" who has "cold eyes just above the painted smile" and "speaks from the autocue, not from the heart". Obama's sudden rise to power - and the inflated expectations he arouses in his cultish supporters - reminds Icke of Hitler. "Obama may not look like Hitler, nor sound like Hitler, but the themes are just the same." Really? Perhaps he should go off and read Mein Kampf, and then Dreams from My Father, and see if he can spot the difference.

That sort of thing is just silly - even if it's true that all modern politics owes more than its practitioners would ever like to admit to the propaganda techniques devised by Dr Goebbels. Nevertheless, Icke's main charge - that Obama's campaign relied upon the clever manipulation of crowd emotions, and was unconnected to any real programme - is not confined to the lunatic fringe. Peter Hitchens, for example, has written in somewhat similar terms:

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation... I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

Maybe the two of them should get together. Here's David Icke on Obama's invocation of "change":

Obama's predominant mantra has been 'change'. Indeed, his massively-funded, record-breaking campaign was based on that one word - change. This is a technique used by Bill Clinton and many others and it is highly effective because, at any point, the system ensures that most people are not happy with the way life is. So, when you don't like the status quo, 'change' can be a potent message, even if, like Obama, you don't say what it means.

It has been vital to his success, and that of his controllers, that he has never specified what his 'hope', 'change', and that other mind-control trigger-word, 'believe', were referring to in terms of policy and the way society in general will be affected. Hope for what? Change what? Believe in what? To answer those questions with specifics would have been fatal to Obama's appeal.

This isn't entirely true. Obama has specified several aspects of what his "change" programme entails. He will, for example, be changing lightbulbs:

First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.

As this extract suggests, the problem with Obama's programme is not lack of detail: if anything it is too wide-ranging and ambitious. The new president gives every impression of being concerned with details - much more than Bush or Blair. It's true, though, that many of the voters were less concerned with the minutiae of policy than with the general mood of change and hope that he represented: change and hope that are certainly much desired at the present time and, I would suggest, rather more appealing than the alternatives, which are stasis and despair.

It wasn't simply mental manipulation that made the voters in America long for change. "Change" is always a potent slogan, of course, but it is only decisive when there is real dissatisfaction. Otherwise the opposite slogan - "continuity" - is at least as powerful. When things are going reasonably well, governments play on the fear that the other lot will ruin things. The trouble with Icke's analysis - with all analyses based on small groups of conspirators secretly controlling the world - is that it assumes both blind stupidity on the part of the public and preternatural intelligence on the part of the elites.

Icke is equally unimpressed by hope, "a meaningless emotion because its fruits are always in the future and, by definition, never in the NOW." It is "a diversion technique... to keep the masses from truly rebelling."

Well, no. Hope is only meaningless if it is divorced from realism. There's little point in hoping that you might win the lottery. But there's ever reason to hope that if you work and and exploit the opportunities that come your way you will make some progress in life. Without hope, progress is impossible, because hope propels effort. It was above the gates of Hell that Dante placed the legend "Abandon hope all ye who enter here": and that was because there was no way out.

But of course Icke's main problem with Obama is that he is merely a tool in the hands of the New World Order. In his universe, the democratic process is one in which the masses are brainwashed into voting for whichever candidate has been pre-selected by the Secret Rulers of the World. The dramatic contrast with Bush is all part of the plan - the "Illuminati" will use the feelgood factor to advance their plan of global domination. At most, Obama is good cop to Bush's bad cop:

The Neoconservative 'Republican' wing of the Illuminati controlled Bush for eight years and led the country into foreign wars and financial chaos (bad guy/problem); now the 'Democratic' wing, led by the infamous Zbigniew Brzezinski, has brought forth the 'saviour', Barack Obama, to lead us into the sunshine with 'hope' and 'change' (good guy/solution).

The "infamous" Zbigniew Brzezinski? The most infamous thing about Jimmy Carter's one-time national security adviser, surely, is the difficulty of spelling his name. Not for Icke:

The Trilateral Commission and the wider Brzezinski network, including Illuminati fronts like the Ford Foundation, have now chosen Obama and the situation will be the same. Brzezinski will call the shots; Obama's job is simply to sell them to the people. This is rather alarming when you think that Brzezinski wants to trigger a war involving Russia and China.

As an Illuminati operative, Brzezinski's aim is to create a world government, central bank, currency and army - a global dictatorship - underpinned by a microchipped population connected to a global computer/satellite system.

Icke digs up an old book of Brzezinski's, published in 1970 and entitled (unenticingly) Between Two Ages: America's role in the Technetronic Era, which he claims is some sort of blueprint for the coming international slave state. I managed to track down an online version, and it's actually very interesting and perceptive about the transition between the industrial and the "information" society - although the high word-score didn't foresee the downfall of communism and thought that by 1985 everyone would have video phones (which would give some governments opportunities for mass surveillance). I was particularly struck by this passage about the threat to liberal democracy posed by "the gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society":

Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific knowhow. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control. Under such circumstances, the scientific and technological momentum of the country would not be reversed but would actually feed on the situation it exploits.

The emergence of a large dominant party, alongside the more narrowly focused and more intensely doctrinaire groupings on the right and the left, could accelerate the trend toward such technological managerialism. Such a large dominant party would combine American society's quest for stability with its historical affinity for innovation. Relying on scientific growth to produce the means for dealing with social ills, it would tap the nation's intellectual talent for broad target planning and exploit the existence of doctrinaire groups by using them as social barometers and as sources of novel ideas. Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society.

The inclination of the doctrinaire left to legitimize means by ends could lead them to justify more social control on the ground that it serves progress. The conservatives, preoccupied with public order and fascinated by modern gadgetry, would be tempted to use the new techniques as a response to unrest, since they would fail to recognize that social control is not the only way to deal with rapid social change. Such an outcome—were it to come to pass—would represent a profoundly pessimistic answer to the question whether American liberal democracy can assimilate and give philosophical meaning to the revolution it is undergoing.

That last sentence of course tends to undermine Icke's view of Brzezinski as a sinister architect of the coming surveillance society - which now seems closer than ever. On the contrary, I hope Obama listens to his advice. Apparently he has been urging the new president not to commit ever more forces to the doomed war in Afghanistan, a strategy that "runs the risk of gradually turning the Afghan population against our efforts. The enterprise thus, paradoxically, is turning in the direction painfully reminiscent of what the Soviets experienced," he said. How true. Obama's apparent determination to sink ever more troops and resources into that unwinnable conflict is perhaps his most misguided policy. He could do worse than pay attention to wise old Brzezinski - even if he is secretly a lizard.