The Odd Reptilian Theory and The People That Believe It
I remember when I first tripped over David Icke at the bookstore. It was a truly terrifying experience.
Like most demagogues, Icke mixes in a bit of truth with his fiction. For example, George Washington is totally posed as Baphomet in his Masonic museum statue. Does that make him the leader of some kind of Satanic conspiracy? No. It makes him a member of some weird frat for the elite who like giving each other daps whenever possible.
At the same time, I once explained the reptilian theory to a friend of mine.
“Who’s David Icke?”
“Some weird British writer who thinks that Al Gore is a shape-shifting, blood-sucking reptile.”
“How is he not?”
I was stumped there.
But the metaphor is problematic for a number of reasons, not least of all that it isn’t true. It’s emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the world of “conspiracy theory.”
Think about it for a second: An untestable theory — with no small degree of racist and antisemitic undertones — consumes too much digital ink and YouTube bandwidth. If you or a friend are spending more than ten seconds throughout a lifetime looking at pictures of the Bush family shape-shifting to their lower fourth dimensional forms, it might be time for an intervention.
Ditto on turquoise track suits.
Reptilian Theory – Lack of Logic
The reptiles are a sort of conspiratorial Godwin’s. Any time someone brings up the reptilian theory, the conversation is over. Why? Because any untestable theory is a total fnord (to use a light and playful conspiracy model that I prefer to the more dire and apocalyptic writings of Icke).
It literally has nothing in the way of information content for the purposes of useful discussion.
The same is true of anything that cannot be proven incorrect. This isn’t conspiracy theory, it’s science. For example, you can’t prove that the entire universe wasn’t created ten seconds ago by a gnome living in the center of the sun who implanted memories in everyone’s head to make them think that the universe was billions of years old. But nor do you have any reason to think that.
It’s the argument that underpins certain forms of atheism, but you don’t have to be an atheist to apply it to the realm of conspiracy theory.
Apply the Scientific Method
If conspiracy theory is to be taken seriously, it needs to begin applying the scientific method to the social science of watching for criminal conspiracies in high levels of power. Note that I said “criminal conspiracies.”
This is part of being more scientific about how we look at the topic. A “conspiracy” carries connotations of Ron Paul Survival Newsletter issues, reptilians and bizarre notions that the World Trade Centers were destroyed by lasers positioned on the moon.
On the other hand, a “criminal conspiracy” is something that nearly everyone understands: A group of people get together and plan a craft a play to do a crime. What is a crime? Well, that’s a long list.
The point is that you’re actually having a discussion about bodies in space-time doing things when you begin reframing the question. Arguments about whether or not there “are” or “are not” reptilian humanoids from the lower fourth dimension necessarily degenerates into inanity, because the statement can be neither proven nor disproven.
Any arguments you come up with against the idea of reptiles just go down the black hole, increasing its size without shedding any more light on the topic than you had before.
In short, don’t engage. It’s like trying to teach a card trick to a dog.
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Nicholas Pell is a recovering conspiracy theorist, radical cynic and freelance writer based out of Hollywood, CA.
