Canadian Jewish Congress Fails To Block Icke Workshops
[Original headline: Bid to block conspiracy theorist fails]
Jewish congress claims sold-out speaker is anti-Semitic
A Vancouver cinema owner has rejected a request from the Canadian Jewish Congress to cancel three workshops by David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist who has been called anti-Semitic for his belief that the world is run by a secret society called the Illuminati.
Icke, a 48-year-old ex-soccer star, has built a lucrative multi-media business selling his story about how a cabal of Illuminati, -- the descendants of alien reptiles that took on human forms -- now dominate the world.
Icke has several Web sites, books and videotapes geared at a largely New Age audience. He is frequently on speaking tours in North America, Europe and Australia.
Vancouver East Theatre owner Hamid Alborzpour said Thursday the Icke talks on Saturday and Sunday afternoons will go on. A third session has been booked for Monday at the 500-seat theatre because the weekend sessions sold out at $39-$45 a ticket.
The CJC, in a letter to Alborzpour last month, said Icke has "denigrated and defamed not only the Jewish people but also many other ethnic and religious groups."
CJC vice-chair Mark Wexler said Thursday that Icke "mixes X-Files with a kind of overt paranoia and hatred." He added that Icke's theories are "wonderfully riveting entertainment and I think that's why it's attractive for young people.
"But underneath is a virulent strain that poses as an awakening but is really a strike against religious traditions."
The nature of Icke's writings are of no concern to Vancouver East Theatre owner Alborzpour.
"I don't care who is going to be in my theatre. I don't even know who David Icke is. I'm not into politics. I'm just thinking about my business."
The Icke engagements are extra income for Alborzpour because they are staged at times when movies are not being shown.
Alborzpour said the group arranging the Icke sessions is providing security and has purchased insurance to cover any damage from protests.
Four other theatres -- the Ridge, Vogue, Hollywood and Massey -- refused Icke a venue. Jon-Paul Walden, general manager of the Vogue, said he and his theatres owners "didn't want to offend any groups in the community."
Icke, in his book . . . and the truth shall set you free, writes: "I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War."
Icke does not criticize Jews or members of any other religion -- just their leadership over the centuries. In the case of the Jews, Icke is very critical of Jewish elites, including the Jewish financial family, the Rothschilds. Icke has written that the state of Israel -- "or Rothschild-land as it really is" -- is the result of "secret-society manipulation."
On the Holocaust, Icke has written that the way the Nazis treated the Jews was "unspeakable." Icke, however, said "the whole war was a holocaust" and the "official line [about the Holocaust] has a vast number of questions to answer and enormous tracts of documented information to explain before we can really know what happened."
Tickets for the Icke workshops were sold at Banyen Books.
Kolin Lymworth, owner of the Kitsilano New Age book store, called the Icke controversy "a tempest in a teapot."
"I've looked at his writings, and I don't find them anti-Semitic. But the accusation is a common one and it's from people who want to prevent him from speaking.
"He is a conspiracy theorist and he is acting, from my point of view, as a kind of David, trying to identify what he sees as a Goliath, a harmful force in human history. The theory doesn't appeal to me but there seem to be quite a few people for whom it's another way to look at world history."
Lymworth said he would not have sold the tickets if Icke was "dividing people or fomenting hatred towards white people or black people or green people."
Anti-racism activist Will Offley has written that Icke's theories are a "mish-mash of most of the dominant themes of contemporary neofascism, mixed with a smattering of topics culled from the U.S. militia movement."
Icke has argued the agents of the Illuminati were behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Oklahoma bombing and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
• Story originally published by:
Vancouver Sun / BC | Doug Ward - Mar 22.02
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