A book by David Icke, which a Jewish online magazine has charged is anti-Semitic, has been used to smear the author Alice Walker. I did what most of Walker's critics have not done. I read the book.
I see this piece as a defense for the right to have crazy views.
I have no idea why Walker thinks Icke is worth supporting, or at least calling him "brave". I also read some of his works a couple of years ago, and found that his critique of the world order and the status quo in the West is somewhat on point, but that his explanations of how this has come about are not. At all.
It is difficult not to see the workings of the power elites as one big conspiracy. Conspiracies exist in real life, you can go to prison for being a part of a conspiracy, at least in the USA, so why is it so unthinkable that the most powerful people in this world should make arrangements about ruling the world behind closed doors? I, for one, believe that the elites are actually conspiring, at least sometimes, but not because of some ancient curse or whatever fantasy Icke talks about. On the contrary, most elites conspire for very worldly reasons: Because they want to stay in power.
What is happening in these troubling years is that the minds of most people have been altered in a way that makes conspiracies obsolete. When everybody thinks the same way, hates the same people, loves the same people, you don't need conspiracies anymore. What YOU feel is true IS true, providing you feel like everybody else. No need for a court ruling, perception IS reality.
I am pretty sure this status quo of the collective mind is NOT a result of some conspiracy views thought out in some back room somewhere, but instead a result of years and years of indoctrination by the media. Hermans and Chomskys account of the mundane causality behind this mechanism is still the best theory of how this came about. We don't need thetans or Illuminati to explain how the masses have been brainwashed. On the contrary, talking about angels or devils or Illuminati as determining agents of the unfairness of the world only gets you ridiculed, and rightly so.
Icke is a nut case, but even broken clocks get the time right twice every day. His explanations are crazy, but what he is trying to explain is actual reality. In my view Ickes theories are detrimental to what must be done. This is a class struggle between real people, not some cosmic battle between forces of Good and Evil.
Part of this class struggle is the very real canceling of everybody that does not follow what is now considered to be "correct thinking". What Chris is doing here is showing us why Icke is not to be believed, not because his thinking isn't "correct", whatever that means, but because there are other, less fantastic ways to interpret reality; ways that are more in line with the real class struggle. Icke has the right to have his crazy views on the world; Walker has the right to find these views "brave", and the rest of us have the right to criticize these views.
I see this piece as a defense for the right to have crazy views. Chris is doing here, what ought to be done everywhere, which is battling the texts you don't like, and their premises, by ARGUING, instead of just smearing the author, as has become the rule.
Applause to Denmark for coming up with you, Niels Duus, and I’ve just paid $55 to be allowed to write that
There is one ancient Chinese proverb that sums up all the pain that those who are are unlucky enough to come into involuntary contact with extraterrestrials experience in their quest to understand what what has happened to them and why:
“When the finger points to the moon, the idiot looks at the finger.”
The astronomers don’t seem to get the biggest shout-out going here for their utterly banal conspiracy: until they get their Nobel Prize for looking at the moon, everybody else is obliged to look at the finger. They know fine that they themselves aren’t seeing the aliens running around in children’s bedrooms and they’ve probably figured out that this ET behaviour mirrors NASA doctrine on using all the resources of the destination environment to save carrying them with you, in ET’s case using human gametes to build their army out of hybridised human flesh. But astronomers have no data to tell you that because they don’t work to educate the public, they work for Nobel Prizes and there isn’t one for sociology; there wasn’t thought to be enough explosive material in that discipline by Nobel himself, perhaps. They are giving the public the finger.
I don’t know what Icke has been reading, but there is certainly a conspiracy hidden in plain sight, to which we all acquiesce, that of the thirty year rule that allows governments to hide events from us for thirty years, or some longer period at their discretion, making of society at large a larger fractal of a person without a memory. This is why Chris Hedges fights to free Assange and against the forces of censorship.
I would say to Chris that, just as one can’t make a good model of terrestrial biology without taking account of the Panspermia theory of Arrhenius, so you can’t interpret history as being devoid of ET intervention; when we stop fooling around with idea that ET is here to help anyone but themselves, we might make sense of the failure of successive Presidents to release the ET files they promised to release. Albeit as a temporary employee of the government the President may not be not authorised to have the full story, but he or she can’t really admit that either. Clinton said he tried and couldn’t find the information.
One thing Icke said struck a chord in the context of Ukraine: to make peace you have to do peaceful things. It shows how people live in their heads and not in their houses: the Ukrainians, having resiled from their undertaking to implement the Minsk II agreement, are not going to take any intervention from anyone, no matter what it costs them or us. This may have flowed from and certainly has the same temperature as the American hyper-masculine “Un-Koolade”, boiling so much that America gets to go to war again over it; and their satellites with them. The alien abductees on the other hand have already been invaded and some may not even know it. Reagan knew it, hence Star Wars, intended to shoot back. Nothing to do with Russia, I think. At least someone in power knew what problems were coming, from a study of materials available to him.
Whew! Thank you Chris Hedges for reading this bizarre book on our behalf. I couldn't even get to the end of your column - the first time ever. I love Alice Walker. Maybe she just believes in free speech and thinks he has the right to express his utterly crazy theories. They are so preposterous that I can't see them damaging Zionists who have crazy theories of their own - such as that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament anointed Jews the chosen people and endowed them with a piece of land - Palestine - and the inalienable right to clear off its inhabitants by force and persecute and imprison those who remain, many locked in an open air concentration camp. What a handy God! What a weird belief system.
Yes, Mr. Hedges' dutiful slog through the impossibly dense thicket of David Icke's endless journeys through his own imagination reminded me of my more youthful but equally dutiful slog through John Milton's also somewhat dense not-quite-middle English Areopagitica in which he exhorts his listeners to allow, of all things, freedom of speech. Back in my undergraduate years of the 1980s I could not hope to understand what Milton was expressing without rewriting his passionate tract into current English, after which I realized the absolute, immutable justice of his cause -- which was later reaffirmed by similar thoughts of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill.
Freedom of speech. What is the point of having a human brain without using it to think and to put those thoughts into words, to share the workings of one's mind with others? It is a quintessentially human act and its resulting form, no matter high/low, ugly/beautiful/ is itself an expression of gratitude for the gift. Milton, Aristotle and Mill understood its necessity for a fully functioning, fully operational, fair and inclusive society. How can anyone oppose it? And yet they do; they always have, they always will. It seems to accompany a slippage, a fall from health in the broader culture. A creeping fear within the power seekers.
God bless Alice Walker and Chris Hedges for rising above this admission of weakness, this shame, to speak out for the act of speaking out.
I think on it similarly. People may as well worship Amun-ra and Osiris. There are elements of the supernatural and exaggeration in every ancient religion/government. To pretend that this one is all true or even more true is preposterous and a set of shackles for humanity.
We do have the right to have "crazy views". I consider the practices and professed beliefs of borne again Christians or Scientologists or hassidic jews or those of "the entertainer" Rachel Maddow (https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/rachel-maddow-oan-defamation-dismissed-1234614682/#!) and her fans......and many, many more "crazy views". So what! That is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. So is Alice Walker. If she thinks the, to me, wacky thesis of Ikes (as summarized by Hedges) is "brave" she is entitled to think that. The fact that Walker holds some "crazy views" (as I perceive them) does not make her books or her views on all manner of other issues no longer worth my time. Nor can it reasonable to bar her from a seat on this book festival's stage. At the risk of expressing a "crazy view", it might be clarifying (might I be so bold as to say illuminating?) to hear Walker explicate her thinking, about Ikes and his writing among other matters, at the festival. Is that a crazy view?
I feel ill reading so much Icke. Thanks for actually doing the work necessary to answer the question of whether Icke is anti-semitic or not. My work has exposed me to a lot of what i consider to be crazy conspiracy theories such as Lyme disease was weaponized at Plum Island (AIDS as well), that the coronavirus was engineered and released to kill off a lot of the world population, that chemtrails are biological weapons and so on. I don't take the details seriously but what i do see is that people know that the world is spiraling out of control, that they are helpless to alter what is happening, that the elites who are supposed to be running things don't care about them, that a lot of rich and powerful people are getting more rich and powerful all the time, and that there are a lot of secrets out there that don't exactly have regular people's well being in mind.
All of that is true. People are just trying to find an explanation for it. I understand the impulse and I sympathize with them. And finally, there is this: whether or not there is a conspiracy, there is nothing I or most people can do about it. We still have to live our lives whether a conspiracy exists or not. So, that is what i do, i focus on what i can change, what i can affect, and the care of my family and myself and friends as best i can. There is enough in front of my eyes to be worried about and that i can directly affect to one extent or another without worrying about secret organizations running the world. (Actually, i think of them as corporations, not secret organizations.)
The fantastical and allegorical aside, it’s hard not to find a sympathetic moral core to Icke’s philosophies. He walks in the waters beyond words, the collective archetypes, through the valves of our consciousness. Madman or prophet?
I had not read Icke before your article. I began with the later works. Are these ideas dangerous to some? Are the labels applied justified? He’s certainly an outsider.
So what is the connection between Icke and Walker? Under what conceivable circumstances could Alice Walker have announced that Icke was "brave"? What precisely is brave about this nutter? Why did Walker find it necessary to offer any comment on his bizarre theories?
I think it may be the connection to Alex Jones of Infowars. David Icke is featured on his show occasionally. I don’t support Alex Jones at all but I do listen to him at times but don’t believe in what he’s doing at all.
I just learned of David Icke recently and when I saw that Chris was writing about him it intrigued me. I began to read Icke's book, Infinite Love is the Only Truth: Everything Else is Illusion. Well, I think he is certainly an original thinker, but I couldn't take him seriously.
I have been a big fan of Chris' writing for years and his actually reading the Icke book that has been brought to light recently is one of the reasons I admire him. He has the curiosity to look for the reason behind what people are saying, to find out for himself, instead of forming an opinion based on what people are saying. My hat is off to him for reading that book.
Chris is anti establishment and supports even alternative writers. This type of banning authors makes many even mire cuties about David Icke. It solves nothing. Personally I don't give a damn what the powers that be think I should or shouldn't read. All of these conspiracy theory books-the Bible and all folk and have some truth in them. That includes Scientology and David Icke. I've been reading everything my mother tried to take away when I was a kid and everything on the Catholic Church banned book list first all ny life I'm 79. Reading should NEVER be censored.
What?! I subscribed because I wanted the rest of the article and now I’m feeling super disappointed…will there be a part 2? This was so intriguing. To read about Ickes work from the lens of a legitimate intellectual - but I wanted more and then a tie in back to Alice Walker.
Before calling someone anti-semitic, it is necessary to look at a great many sources authored by the accused, not just one. Alice Walker has no history of anti-semitism, none at all. In fact, I am certain she has advocated tolerance and an open mind towards all perspectives, save those that insult specific groups of people. She was much influenced by Buddhism, for one, a religion that regards bias as an impediment to a full and rich life.
Icke is not worth spending time on. What needs to be addressed is the tendency among some to castigate someone over a trivial episode in her past. That is why "wokeness" has a certain validity, even though the term is commonly used by the right to criticize the left. You have to look at the whole trajectory of a life to discover that person's most deeply held values, not a single statement uncovered by thought police of whatever tradition.
I'm with Lynne Dempsey. Thank you for reading it so I don't have to. Under the heading of full disclosure, I'll tell you that I think that people who NEED religion or one of it's analogs are in serious need of mental training.
I too read as much of Icke's book as I could stomach. I'm disappointed that Hedges is now using this column to be a kind of apologist here for a worldview, in Icke's case (and in Walker's by implication) that is truly dangerous in these times of QAnon and other types of conspiratorial craziness.
What an extraordinary series of leaps. Somehow Alice Walker becomes *truly dangerous* because of, not even the thoughts of some wacko she chooses to support, but of some completely different wackos who happen to rhyme with David Icke in your mind! (The true danger from whom, of course, needs not even a hint at explanation…) This kind of utterly diseased thinking is exactly why Chris is now on Substack, you know.
"Utterly diseased?" Icke's belief that "lizard people" who are ETs and are controlling the world through the banking system is madness, and that's diseased. To be worried about such conspiracy theorists and those who support their work is healthy, I'd affirm, especially in 2022. Have you read Icke? Have you watched his broadcast interviews? There is nothing "brave" as Walker claims about his insanity.
The whole point is that there’s a world of difference between finding a writer, say, Icke, to be worthless, finding them to be *dangerous*, and another world of difference with finding them to be so dangerous that it’s appropriate to deplatform other writers who happen not to agree with you about whether they’re worthless. For the latter, it is in fact really important whether there exist quotes of David Icke saying, eg “Hitler should have finished the job”, or whether the strange absurdities quoted here are pretty much the end of it. Do you have such a quote from your reading or watching, or any other quote definitely more obnoxious than what’s described in this post? If so, that would be a whole lot more useful than a broad denunciation of apologetics for a worldview you’ve so far only implied is held by Icke (to say nothing of Walker.) Again, the vague gesturing at…*something*…with the “especially in 2022” as if that settles the discussion is far more worrying to me than some foolish New Age author could ever be.
hedges is hardly being an apologist for Icke's world view. He read the book to find out if in fact he was anti-semitic as the people who cancelled Walker were claiming. He isn't. He is a lot of things, in my opinion crazy among them, but he does not appear to be anti-semitic from hedges reading of the text. again, hedges is not being an apologist but merely reporting on an issue of relevance.
I have read Ickes and would recommend your doing so too. I find Ickes to be anti-semitic as many others do. Hedges justifies him in some weird way as akin to "New Age" philosophers. I don't think as I've already said that Walker should have been cancelled for recommending Ickes but I do think, again, as I've written, that her judgment about his "bravery" as a thinker is something to be concerned about. I am perplexed, frankly, about why and how Hedges, whom I've admired for years, doesn't find Ickes both offensive and dangerous especially today when strange conspiracies have afflicted our political environment.
The issue with putting up with people like Icke or Alex Jones for that matter is that of free speech. The purpose of it is to protect speech you don’t like or agree with, with a few exceptions. When you stop one those you agree with are also stopped eventually. Someone else also said the answer to bad speech is more speech.
Alice Walker is not merely "putting up with" Icke's antisemitism but promoting it. Let me be clear: I am neither against book-banning or cancellation. But I do think it important to recognize dangerous philosophies. There is an interesting article in The Atlantic just now published about Alice Walker's antisemitism.
I just read that Atlantic article. It was terrible. Clearly that author has never read the Talmud. Anyone has the right to criticize any book, even holy ones.
no, hedges doesn't. and dangerous? kind of his whole point is that people have the right to write and publish things that other people find offensive, wrong, and crazy. what you are applying to icke is the same thing that the US government is saying about assange.
A final note: ever since alice walker developed lyme disease, she has not been the same, from what i can tell (and i am somewhat of an expert on this) she developed neurological lyme symptoms; her work has not been as fine as it was prior to the infection. this is not unusual with neurological lyme infections.
Chris, you impress me. Thanks for being willing to objectively examine the cultural milieu beyond geopolitics, with an even hand. Icke is kooky, but as you correctly point out, kookiness is not a unique thread in the history of human thought. Religion is an obvious parallel, but we can also look to the transhumanists' arguments for AI, simulation theory, and the Singularity for a contemporary example. The dominant neoliberal belief system of Scientism and secular materialism carries its own dogmas and detrimental influences. I appreciate this open-minded exploration and welcome more from you.
I see this piece as a defense for the right to have crazy views.
I have no idea why Walker thinks Icke is worth supporting, or at least calling him "brave". I also read some of his works a couple of years ago, and found that his critique of the world order and the status quo in the West is somewhat on point, but that his explanations of how this has come about are not. At all.
It is difficult not to see the workings of the power elites as one big conspiracy. Conspiracies exist in real life, you can go to prison for being a part of a conspiracy, at least in the USA, so why is it so unthinkable that the most powerful people in this world should make arrangements about ruling the world behind closed doors? I, for one, believe that the elites are actually conspiring, at least sometimes, but not because of some ancient curse or whatever fantasy Icke talks about. On the contrary, most elites conspire for very worldly reasons: Because they want to stay in power.
What is happening in these troubling years is that the minds of most people have been altered in a way that makes conspiracies obsolete. When everybody thinks the same way, hates the same people, loves the same people, you don't need conspiracies anymore. What YOU feel is true IS true, providing you feel like everybody else. No need for a court ruling, perception IS reality.
I am pretty sure this status quo of the collective mind is NOT a result of some conspiracy views thought out in some back room somewhere, but instead a result of years and years of indoctrination by the media. Hermans and Chomskys account of the mundane causality behind this mechanism is still the best theory of how this came about. We don't need thetans or Illuminati to explain how the masses have been brainwashed. On the contrary, talking about angels or devils or Illuminati as determining agents of the unfairness of the world only gets you ridiculed, and rightly so.
Icke is a nut case, but even broken clocks get the time right twice every day. His explanations are crazy, but what he is trying to explain is actual reality. In my view Ickes theories are detrimental to what must be done. This is a class struggle between real people, not some cosmic battle between forces of Good and Evil.
Part of this class struggle is the very real canceling of everybody that does not follow what is now considered to be "correct thinking". What Chris is doing here is showing us why Icke is not to be believed, not because his thinking isn't "correct", whatever that means, but because there are other, less fantastic ways to interpret reality; ways that are more in line with the real class struggle. Icke has the right to have his crazy views on the world; Walker has the right to find these views "brave", and the rest of us have the right to criticize these views.
I see this piece as a defense for the right to have crazy views. Chris is doing here, what ought to be done everywhere, which is battling the texts you don't like, and their premises, by ARGUING, instead of just smearing the author, as has become the rule.
Greetings from Denmark!
Applause to Denmark for coming up with you, Niels Duus, and I’ve just paid $55 to be allowed to write that
There is one ancient Chinese proverb that sums up all the pain that those who are are unlucky enough to come into involuntary contact with extraterrestrials experience in their quest to understand what what has happened to them and why:
“When the finger points to the moon, the idiot looks at the finger.”
The astronomers don’t seem to get the biggest shout-out going here for their utterly banal conspiracy: until they get their Nobel Prize for looking at the moon, everybody else is obliged to look at the finger. They know fine that they themselves aren’t seeing the aliens running around in children’s bedrooms and they’ve probably figured out that this ET behaviour mirrors NASA doctrine on using all the resources of the destination environment to save carrying them with you, in ET’s case using human gametes to build their army out of hybridised human flesh. But astronomers have no data to tell you that because they don’t work to educate the public, they work for Nobel Prizes and there isn’t one for sociology; there wasn’t thought to be enough explosive material in that discipline by Nobel himself, perhaps. They are giving the public the finger.
I don’t know what Icke has been reading, but there is certainly a conspiracy hidden in plain sight, to which we all acquiesce, that of the thirty year rule that allows governments to hide events from us for thirty years, or some longer period at their discretion, making of society at large a larger fractal of a person without a memory. This is why Chris Hedges fights to free Assange and against the forces of censorship.
I would say to Chris that, just as one can’t make a good model of terrestrial biology without taking account of the Panspermia theory of Arrhenius, so you can’t interpret history as being devoid of ET intervention; when we stop fooling around with idea that ET is here to help anyone but themselves, we might make sense of the failure of successive Presidents to release the ET files they promised to release. Albeit as a temporary employee of the government the President may not be not authorised to have the full story, but he or she can’t really admit that either. Clinton said he tried and couldn’t find the information.
One thing Icke said struck a chord in the context of Ukraine: to make peace you have to do peaceful things. It shows how people live in their heads and not in their houses: the Ukrainians, having resiled from their undertaking to implement the Minsk II agreement, are not going to take any intervention from anyone, no matter what it costs them or us. This may have flowed from and certainly has the same temperature as the American hyper-masculine “Un-Koolade”, boiling so much that America gets to go to war again over it; and their satellites with them. The alien abductees on the other hand have already been invaded and some may not even know it. Reagan knew it, hence Star Wars, intended to shoot back. Nothing to do with Russia, I think. At least someone in power knew what problems were coming, from a study of materials available to him.
Well said!
Whew! Thank you Chris Hedges for reading this bizarre book on our behalf. I couldn't even get to the end of your column - the first time ever. I love Alice Walker. Maybe she just believes in free speech and thinks he has the right to express his utterly crazy theories. They are so preposterous that I can't see them damaging Zionists who have crazy theories of their own - such as that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament anointed Jews the chosen people and endowed them with a piece of land - Palestine - and the inalienable right to clear off its inhabitants by force and persecute and imprison those who remain, many locked in an open air concentration camp. What a handy God! What a weird belief system.
Yes, Mr. Hedges' dutiful slog through the impossibly dense thicket of David Icke's endless journeys through his own imagination reminded me of my more youthful but equally dutiful slog through John Milton's also somewhat dense not-quite-middle English Areopagitica in which he exhorts his listeners to allow, of all things, freedom of speech. Back in my undergraduate years of the 1980s I could not hope to understand what Milton was expressing without rewriting his passionate tract into current English, after which I realized the absolute, immutable justice of his cause -- which was later reaffirmed by similar thoughts of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill.
Freedom of speech. What is the point of having a human brain without using it to think and to put those thoughts into words, to share the workings of one's mind with others? It is a quintessentially human act and its resulting form, no matter high/low, ugly/beautiful/ is itself an expression of gratitude for the gift. Milton, Aristotle and Mill understood its necessity for a fully functioning, fully operational, fair and inclusive society. How can anyone oppose it? And yet they do; they always have, they always will. It seems to accompany a slippage, a fall from health in the broader culture. A creeping fear within the power seekers.
God bless Alice Walker and Chris Hedges for rising above this admission of weakness, this shame, to speak out for the act of speaking out.
I think on it similarly. People may as well worship Amun-ra and Osiris. There are elements of the supernatural and exaggeration in every ancient religion/government. To pretend that this one is all true or even more true is preposterous and a set of shackles for humanity.
We do have the right to have "crazy views". I consider the practices and professed beliefs of borne again Christians or Scientologists or hassidic jews or those of "the entertainer" Rachel Maddow (https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/rachel-maddow-oan-defamation-dismissed-1234614682/#!) and her fans......and many, many more "crazy views". So what! That is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. So is Alice Walker. If she thinks the, to me, wacky thesis of Ikes (as summarized by Hedges) is "brave" she is entitled to think that. The fact that Walker holds some "crazy views" (as I perceive them) does not make her books or her views on all manner of other issues no longer worth my time. Nor can it reasonable to bar her from a seat on this book festival's stage. At the risk of expressing a "crazy view", it might be clarifying (might I be so bold as to say illuminating?) to hear Walker explicate her thinking, about Ikes and his writing among other matters, at the festival. Is that a crazy view?
I feel ill reading so much Icke. Thanks for actually doing the work necessary to answer the question of whether Icke is anti-semitic or not. My work has exposed me to a lot of what i consider to be crazy conspiracy theories such as Lyme disease was weaponized at Plum Island (AIDS as well), that the coronavirus was engineered and released to kill off a lot of the world population, that chemtrails are biological weapons and so on. I don't take the details seriously but what i do see is that people know that the world is spiraling out of control, that they are helpless to alter what is happening, that the elites who are supposed to be running things don't care about them, that a lot of rich and powerful people are getting more rich and powerful all the time, and that there are a lot of secrets out there that don't exactly have regular people's well being in mind.
All of that is true. People are just trying to find an explanation for it. I understand the impulse and I sympathize with them. And finally, there is this: whether or not there is a conspiracy, there is nothing I or most people can do about it. We still have to live our lives whether a conspiracy exists or not. So, that is what i do, i focus on what i can change, what i can affect, and the care of my family and myself and friends as best i can. There is enough in front of my eyes to be worried about and that i can directly affect to one extent or another without worrying about secret organizations running the world. (Actually, i think of them as corporations, not secret organizations.)
Thanks for reading the book Chris so I didn't have to. And some extra gratitude for maintaining some professional objectivity in your report.
The fantastical and allegorical aside, it’s hard not to find a sympathetic moral core to Icke’s philosophies. He walks in the waters beyond words, the collective archetypes, through the valves of our consciousness. Madman or prophet?
I had not read Icke before your article. I began with the later works. Are these ideas dangerous to some? Are the labels applied justified? He’s certainly an outsider.
So what is the connection between Icke and Walker? Under what conceivable circumstances could Alice Walker have announced that Icke was "brave"? What precisely is brave about this nutter? Why did Walker find it necessary to offer any comment on his bizarre theories?
I think it may be the connection to Alex Jones of Infowars. David Icke is featured on his show occasionally. I don’t support Alex Jones at all but I do listen to him at times but don’t believe in what he’s doing at all.
I just learned of David Icke recently and when I saw that Chris was writing about him it intrigued me. I began to read Icke's book, Infinite Love is the Only Truth: Everything Else is Illusion. Well, I think he is certainly an original thinker, but I couldn't take him seriously.
I have been a big fan of Chris' writing for years and his actually reading the Icke book that has been brought to light recently is one of the reasons I admire him. He has the curiosity to look for the reason behind what people are saying, to find out for himself, instead of forming an opinion based on what people are saying. My hat is off to him for reading that book.
I wish I was a fast enough reader to do the same!
Chris is anti establishment and supports even alternative writers. This type of banning authors makes many even mire cuties about David Icke. It solves nothing. Personally I don't give a damn what the powers that be think I should or shouldn't read. All of these conspiracy theory books-the Bible and all folk and have some truth in them. That includes Scientology and David Icke. I've been reading everything my mother tried to take away when I was a kid and everything on the Catholic Church banned book list first all ny life I'm 79. Reading should NEVER be censored.
Take the best and leave the rest but do not tell others they must not read something or ban an author such as Ms. Walker
What?! I subscribed because I wanted the rest of the article and now I’m feeling super disappointed…will there be a part 2? This was so intriguing. To read about Ickes work from the lens of a legitimate intellectual - but I wanted more and then a tie in back to Alice Walker.
But if you read the book, what if it doesn't confirm your priors?
Before calling someone anti-semitic, it is necessary to look at a great many sources authored by the accused, not just one. Alice Walker has no history of anti-semitism, none at all. In fact, I am certain she has advocated tolerance and an open mind towards all perspectives, save those that insult specific groups of people. She was much influenced by Buddhism, for one, a religion that regards bias as an impediment to a full and rich life.
Icke is not worth spending time on. What needs to be addressed is the tendency among some to castigate someone over a trivial episode in her past. That is why "wokeness" has a certain validity, even though the term is commonly used by the right to criticize the left. You have to look at the whole trajectory of a life to discover that person's most deeply held values, not a single statement uncovered by thought police of whatever tradition.
All in all — Icke is indeed insane.
I'm with Lynne Dempsey. Thank you for reading it so I don't have to. Under the heading of full disclosure, I'll tell you that I think that people who NEED religion or one of it's analogs are in serious need of mental training.
I too read as much of Icke's book as I could stomach. I'm disappointed that Hedges is now using this column to be a kind of apologist here for a worldview, in Icke's case (and in Walker's by implication) that is truly dangerous in these times of QAnon and other types of conspiratorial craziness.
What an extraordinary series of leaps. Somehow Alice Walker becomes *truly dangerous* because of, not even the thoughts of some wacko she chooses to support, but of some completely different wackos who happen to rhyme with David Icke in your mind! (The true danger from whom, of course, needs not even a hint at explanation…) This kind of utterly diseased thinking is exactly why Chris is now on Substack, you know.
"Utterly diseased?" Icke's belief that "lizard people" who are ETs and are controlling the world through the banking system is madness, and that's diseased. To be worried about such conspiracy theorists and those who support their work is healthy, I'd affirm, especially in 2022. Have you read Icke? Have you watched his broadcast interviews? There is nothing "brave" as Walker claims about his insanity.
The whole point is that there’s a world of difference between finding a writer, say, Icke, to be worthless, finding them to be *dangerous*, and another world of difference with finding them to be so dangerous that it’s appropriate to deplatform other writers who happen not to agree with you about whether they’re worthless. For the latter, it is in fact really important whether there exist quotes of David Icke saying, eg “Hitler should have finished the job”, or whether the strange absurdities quoted here are pretty much the end of it. Do you have such a quote from your reading or watching, or any other quote definitely more obnoxious than what’s described in this post? If so, that would be a whole lot more useful than a broad denunciation of apologetics for a worldview you’ve so far only implied is held by Icke (to say nothing of Walker.) Again, the vague gesturing at…*something*…with the “especially in 2022” as if that settles the discussion is far more worrying to me than some foolish New Age author could ever be.
Maybe the lizard people thing is crazy but is that a justification for banning someone?
hedges is hardly being an apologist for Icke's world view. He read the book to find out if in fact he was anti-semitic as the people who cancelled Walker were claiming. He isn't. He is a lot of things, in my opinion crazy among them, but he does not appear to be anti-semitic from hedges reading of the text. again, hedges is not being an apologist but merely reporting on an issue of relevance.
I have read Ickes and would recommend your doing so too. I find Ickes to be anti-semitic as many others do. Hedges justifies him in some weird way as akin to "New Age" philosophers. I don't think as I've already said that Walker should have been cancelled for recommending Ickes but I do think, again, as I've written, that her judgment about his "bravery" as a thinker is something to be concerned about. I am perplexed, frankly, about why and how Hedges, whom I've admired for years, doesn't find Ickes both offensive and dangerous especially today when strange conspiracies have afflicted our political environment.
The issue with putting up with people like Icke or Alex Jones for that matter is that of free speech. The purpose of it is to protect speech you don’t like or agree with, with a few exceptions. When you stop one those you agree with are also stopped eventually. Someone else also said the answer to bad speech is more speech.
Alice Walker is not merely "putting up with" Icke's antisemitism but promoting it. Let me be clear: I am neither against book-banning or cancellation. But I do think it important to recognize dangerous philosophies. There is an interesting article in The Atlantic just now published about Alice Walker's antisemitism.
I just read that Atlantic article. It was terrible. Clearly that author has never read the Talmud. Anyone has the right to criticize any book, even holy ones.
Oops, I meant I am not for book-banning or cancellation. Sorry for the mistake.
I got you.No problem. I’ve not listened to Icke enough. Can you give an example of what he has said that might be dangerous?
no, hedges doesn't. and dangerous? kind of his whole point is that people have the right to write and publish things that other people find offensive, wrong, and crazy. what you are applying to icke is the same thing that the US government is saying about assange.
A final note: ever since alice walker developed lyme disease, she has not been the same, from what i can tell (and i am somewhat of an expert on this) she developed neurological lyme symptoms; her work has not been as fine as it was prior to the infection. this is not unusual with neurological lyme infections.
Hedges is pointing out that Icke isn't anti-Semitic. He is anti-establishment.
The truth is the truth. We should protect it no matter where it comes from.
Chris, you impress me. Thanks for being willing to objectively examine the cultural milieu beyond geopolitics, with an even hand. Icke is kooky, but as you correctly point out, kookiness is not a unique thread in the history of human thought. Religion is an obvious parallel, but we can also look to the transhumanists' arguments for AI, simulation theory, and the Singularity for a contemporary example. The dominant neoliberal belief system of Scientism and secular materialism carries its own dogmas and detrimental influences. I appreciate this open-minded exploration and welcome more from you.