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The Yoda of 9/11

Continued from page 4

Published on August 09, 2007

Certainly, pro-troofer blogs such as the all-encompassing 911blogger.com and the alternate reality of Alex Jones' Prisonplanet.com achieve something similar, but SLC is observing developments from outside the bughouse's fishbowl. Jones' posse and those at 911blogger.com still have their straitjackets on.

"To us, they're all insane," offers Bennett. "But, to them, there are different levels of bizarreness."

Indeed, there are LIHOPers, those who believe the government "let it [9/11] happen on purpose"; MIHOPers, who insist that the government "made it happen on purpose"; "no-planers," who assert that no planes were involved in any part of the attack; people who believe there was no plane at the Pentagon attack but, otherwise, there were planes. There are even "pod people," who cling to a notion, widely rejected in the movement, that one of the photos of United Airlines Flight 175 just before it flew into the South Tower of the WTC shows a pod or bulge on the underside of the plane near the fuselage.

Posters on 911blogger.com and other conspiracy theory sites angrily reject certain ideas, like those of the outcast no-planers. They sometimes even threaten violence against the likes of the no-planers and ban them from forums for fear of being tainted by their lunacy.

"I've said it before, but it's like the guy at the loony bin dressed up like Napoleon stating he's not the nut; it's the guy who looks like George Washington who's a nut!" says Curley, who then posits his version of Gresham's law: "The junk stuff drives out good stuff. Because the junk stuff is so much more entertaining."

Entertaining or very scary, depending on your point of view.

For instance, out on the furthest edges of 9/11 is former soccer player and erstwhile BBC sports commentator David Icke, who, in 1991, went on a popular British TV talk show and announced that he was the son of God, and that a series of natural disasters would ravish planet Earth. Initially written off as a raving loon, Icke rehabilitated his image by becoming a tireless public speaker, New Age guru and author of several books maintaining that a secret race of blood-sucking lizard people rule Earth. This reptilian global elite is the hidden hand behind all things that occur in the world, and it includes such notables as Queen Elizabeth II, former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, Kris Kristofferson, and, uh, Boxcar Willie.

For Icke, these nefarious lizardoids are, in fact, the shadowy Illuminati of conspiracy lore, and their plan for global domination is laid out in the nefarious anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Order of Zion. Though Icke was circulating this high-grade octane way before 9/11, the attacks on the Twin Towers have meshed seamlessly into his paranoid, sci-fi ramblings. George W. Bush? A lizard-boy, of course. The neocons in his administration? Might as well be a pack of Geico geckos. 9/11? It's all part of the plot, the curse of the Komodo dragons. As Icke himself states, "The Fourth Reich is not coming. It's here."

Naturally, all this bothers Jewish groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, which has made its displeasure with Icke well-known. Icke, in turn, has called the ADL "an Illuminati front." Icke is part of a virulent strain of anti-Semitism that runs throughout the 9/11 conspiracy crowd.

Linked from Screw Loose Change is Jon Ronson's brilliant little documentary David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews, part of a five-episode series for British TV called Secret Rulers of the World. In the Icke doc, Ronson interviews Texas radio crazy Alex Jones, the belligerent arm-flailing blowhard who's been battling the New World Order since the '90s. Jones is so wacky that Curley thinks he's one step from packing up and moving to his own private Guyana, followers in tow.

But get this: Icke's even too moon-batty for Jones, who himself believes that, once a year, the leaders of the world gather at Bohemian Grove in Northern California to perform Satanic rituals. Jones' descriptions of Icke sound much like the analyses of Jones from his critics.

"That's the problem with David Icke," says Jones in the Ronson interview. "He's got a good line to a point, then he discredits it all. It's like a turd in the punch bowl. That's his job."

Jones then follows up with what must be one of the most un-self-aware statements ever uttered:

"He's either a smart opportunist con man, or he's completely insane, or he's working for [the New World Order] directly. But I tend to think he's just a con man who understands how things work and is just a real opportunist."

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