I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that most Schizophrenics didn’t find out about the Illuminati from having personally encountered them in Barvaria in 1776, but in fact read about them in a book or saw them on TV, as Frylock says.
The actual answer to “Where did David Icke get his ideas from?” is the film They Live (1988, dir John Carpenter).
If you’ve seen the film, you don’t need to look anywhere else for Icke’s inspiration, he just took the entire premise and built a career out of regurgitating it as “fact”.
It’s a good film, well worth seeing.
Just as there was no “moon-landing-hoax” conspiracy theory before Capricorn One introduced the idea, there was no “reptilian alien shape shifters secretly rule the world” conspiracy theory before They Live.
I’m surprised we’ve got to page two here without anyone mentioning it. Have a look at the IMDB comments page for the film, you’ll see that Icke isn’t the only paranoid that thinks the film is a documentary.
I find that some historians like to find a “rational” explanation for why people believed in things we find outlandish today. One such example is the the theory that ergotism (i.e. Saint Anthony’s Fire) was responsible for the behavior of the girl’s who accused the witches in Salem Village, Massachusetts. How do you explain someone like Hildegarde of Bingen? She was a 12th century abbess who suffered from blinding headaches and received visions from God. How about the ever popular Joan of Arc? Were her revelations the result, as good old Ebeneezer put it, a bit of bad potato? Europe didn’t have potatoes at the time so that probably wasn’t it. Maybe she suffered from schizophrenia. It’s difficult to make a diagnosis. Why are all my examples female? Today we might refer to Hildegarde or Joan of Arc as cray. Were they?
SmashTheState is right that mental illness is defined within a cultural context. I’m not convinced about his argument that connects schizophrenia to shamanism, and, yes, I did type those keywords he suggested into Google but didn’t get anything in return I thought was a reputable source.
Easy. Hildegard had migraines. The type of “visions” she had can happen with migraines.
You just made several illicit assumptions about what I know and don’t know.
Actually, this is covered & agreed upon by Cecil in THE STRAIGHT DOPE books, though IIRC, he casts doubt as to what influence the Illuminati as a group or individuals had on the French Revolution & the subsequent revolutionary proto-Communist movements. So this is where I plug my new favorite book Terry Melanson’s PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of The Illuminati, which actually documents the connections.
There were plenty of people who expressed doubt about the moon landings. A full-fledged CT about them didn’t emerge until “Cap One”, I’ll admit.
As to a precident for Icke’s Reptilians, I’ll suggest the racist, anti-Semitic “Serpent Seed” teaching of some white Christian Identity groups (started by Wesley Swift) and, I think, Black Muslim/Nation of Islam groups.
Sooo …
As to the op - either he’s schizophrenic (read “psychiatrically ill” or “more perceptive than most and a seer/prophet” as is your wont) or he’s a cunning marketer who combined a variety of known past wingnut conspiracy and science fiction memes into a new salable product.
If you really want a debate about schizophrenia and normality and reality and society, then you may want to open up a new thread. There is at least one high functioning schizophrenic on this board who is quite articulate at arguing the neurodiversity/neurotypical perspective who would likely chime in if the subject was clear from the op.
For my two cents worth - it may be that some of those we label as schizophrenic could very well function as prophets or seers or shamans in a different society in a different time. Or alternatively be burned as witches or tortured to exorcise the evil spirits that were possessing them. Probably more often the latter than the former, but that’s just a WAG.
All any of us really have are our perceptual experiences of some ultimately unknowable external reality outside of us. But as we humans are social creatures existing within groups of other social creatures those with perceptual experiences that lead to understandings of reality way out of line of the overwhelming majority of others are, by definition, abnormal. And since, in the society in which we exist, that different perception of reality often severely impairs the ability to function within the society, it is a disability. Often, albeit not always, a fairly crippling one.
Please watch this retrospective of his 1991 interview, which I watched live. He’s completely barking - and astonishingly narcissistic too.
I hereby nominate this for a **Vinyl Turnip **“Bronze Loaf” award for excellence in posting. See you both at this year’s Loafies!
I think David Icke is just a fan of the TV show ‘V’.
And as to the contention that schizophrenia is a “gift”, I’ll add this observation (based in part on taking care of and observing mentally ill patients during medical training) - the common factor among all those folks with different diagnoses was that they were all unhappy, if not actually clinically depressed. Not one felt he/she was somehow specially blessed. Schizophrenics in general are tormented by their uncontrollable hallucinations/delusions, even if some are equally or more distressed by the effects of their treatment.
Another failure of comprehension on your part. Your insistence that science is helpless to weigh in on nonsensical contentions and can only say “there’s no evidence to support that so far” reflects a gross misunderstanding of the way science works and critical thinking in general.
You forgot an option with that. David Icke is one of the greatest trolls the world has ever seen, and secretly laughing his fool head off.
‘V’ predates ‘They Live’.
That’s been my inclination.
Yep. It’s a common enough mis-belief, especially by those whose arguments can’t stand up to logical scrutiny. But it fails since we do indeed have access to the null hypothesis. That doesn’t mean that the NH is right, but it does mean that it has to be falsified in order to proceed further.
It also means that if you cite Jung in anything other than a college English course, then people get to point and laugh.
Do not accuse other posters of trolling in Great Debates.
[ /Moderating ]
No, they cannot. It is impossible to circumcise a lizard, as my cousin Abraham found out the hard way.
Actually, we’re descended from pigs and monkeys. I thought everyone knew that.
That’s exactly what a ZioLizard would say.
Pretending to be mammalian, you should be ashamed of yourself… if lizards knew how to feel human emotions, that is.