David Icke pays a lot of money in damages

David Icke

While David Icke was a Green Party Principal Speaker in the late ’80s, others in the party such as David Taylor (a subsequent Principal Speaker) took the lead in raising the alarm about his conspiracy theories. The main focus of criticism was Icke’s book ‘The Robot’s Rebellion’(1), which used the well known antisemitic text ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ as a major source to repeatedly link Jews with a global elite of Illuminati.

Although Icke was no longer Principal Speaker, he was still associated with the party, not least by the media. The campaign to expose his antisemitism spread beyond the Green Party. There was some success persuading venues not to host him.

Icke retaliated by accusing David Taylor of being one of the reptile humans who were conspiring to take over the world. He also libelled one of the activists, Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman.

From Warman’s site:

“British conspiracy writer David Icke and co-defendants have paid Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman $210,000 CDN (117,000 GBP) in damages and legal costs to settle a libel action against them.

In 1999-2000, Warman had worked with various Jewish and anti-racism groups to notify public venues in Canada of discriminatory elements within Icke’s mishmash of conspiracy theories. After being provided with material from Icke’s own writings, a number of these venues withdrew permission for Icke to use their facilities in his tours.

In retaliation, Icke included false allegations in his 2001 book Children of the Matrix that Warman was seeking to suppress Icke’s purported exposure of Satanic child abuse and murder.

…

Warman said “This settlement exposes Icke’s argument that no one had ever sued him because his allegations were true as nothing more than a fallacy.””

Read it all.

Richard Warman

This may be less a triumph over antisemitism than a triumph over defamation, but it is very helpful in discrediting a still-popular political character with antisemitic views. And for those like David Taylor and Richard Warman who stood up to Icke on antisemitism and suffered for it, this is justice. Spread the word.

But in case you’re thinking we’re out of the woods, you should know that politically-experienced Green Party supporters are still instinctively amplifying David Icke on Twitter. And does anybody know if Steve Mason (who I love) is still leaving the Ickey bit at the end of ‘Fight Them Back’ out of his live shows? Conspiracy beliefs and their devoted adherents are the outriders for hard right thinking.

Footnotes

Unlinked because I don’t want this crap going even a tiny bit up the search engine rankings. Copy and paste into your browser address bar.

(1) http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biggestsecret/robotsrebellion/robotsrebellion.htm

Image credit

• David Icke by Stef (cropped)” by Stefano Maffei: Stefano Maffei. Derivative work: SlimVirgin – David Icke by Stefano Maffei. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Icke_by_Stef_(cropped).jpg#mediaviewer/File:David_Icke_by_Stef_(cropped).jpg
• Richard Warman. Used with permission. http://www.richardwarman.ca/?cat=1