ok, maybe we should laugh a little less at david icke's alien lizards…

Skeptical blogger Marlon Solomon lays out a persuasive case that we missed a toxic neo-Nazi ideology hiding under Icke's veneer of immortal alien reptilians.

If you've ever had any interest in the world of conspiracy theorists, you have absolutely heard the name David Icke, famous for randomly claiming he was the son of God during a TV broadcast in the UK and founding a small media empire for his books, in which he claims that an ancient race of alien lizards secretly controls the world and is trying to cull us through vaccines. He was also featured on prime time Russian TV as a "political scientist" to ruminate on how the Arab Spring was an American conspiracy to destabilize much of the Middle East for its nefarious purposes.

Of course he was not asked about whether President Obama was an alien lizard because you know he was in Icke's mind. He's the ideal kind of loony conspiracy theorist perfect for as a punchline, blending tales of ancient aliens, alien abductions, and using the plot of The Matrix trilogy as the perfect explanation of why we're not able to see said evil extraterrestrial lizards unless their reality shield gives way. Yet, skeptical artist and conspiracy blogger Marlon Solomon has a warning for us when it comes to talking about the famous crank: under all the lizards and sci-fi plots, he's a neo-Nazi beloved by the populist far right.

In a lengthy post, Solomon lays out a fairly strong case that Icke preaches a kind of Brexitism/Trumpism with a heavy smattering of outlandish notions about reality-altering secret society which obscures the noxious underlying anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitism, and nationalism, not at all unlike what we see with Alex Jones' InfoWars. His followers post his speeches to white supremacist and neo-Nazi blogs in inspirational articles and exposes of the sinister forces trying to subjugate the world, with said sinister forces being Jews more often than not.

Now, one would think that with their supposedly 3,000 year history on Earth and reality-warping tools they'd be a lot farther along in enslaving humanity than they appear to be and people like Icke and Jones would be brought to heel before they became household names, but it doesn't matter to their followers. They finally have someone to blame for all their problems and an excuse to rebel against the changes they don't like by even further dehumanizing those with whom they disagree. And that's what Icke is ultimately selling. The alien lizards are just a bonus…