UK conspiracy theorist Icke draws Zurich crowd

The appeal of controversial British author and speaker David Icke extends to Switzerland, if his recent daylong lecture at Zurich’s Kongresshaus is anything to go by.

A conference over the weekend, organised by the Swiss branch of international New Age organisation Ground Crew, marked the final leg of Icke’s tour of European cities.

Regarded as a crackpot by some and with the reverence of a messiah by others, Icke is known for giving marathon seven-hour-plus talks on spirituality, philosophy, and – one of his favourite subjects - global conspiracy.

In Zurich, where he attracted 650 people on Saturday, Icke went overtime with a performance, divided into three sections, that lasted more than eight and a half hours.

The 57-year-old former BBC sports presenter, in the Swiss city for the first time, received loud applause for lambasting Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Icke believes Obama has been co-opted by the evil forces he rails against.

The day was split into three sections in which the speaker covered the full gamut of his ideas, from his dogma that our physical world is a virtual reality illusion, to his call for a “revolution of perception” and a “shift in consciousness”.

Throughout, he illustrated his points with a vast array of PowerPoint images. He cracked jokes and did impressions, even if they were a little lost on the Swiss audience. His presentation, delivered in English, was translated into Swiss-German.

Icke spent a good three hours detailing his most vilified belief: that the world is controlled by an elite group of individuals in charge of government, media and financial institutions.

He regards them as “shape-shifting reptilians” descended from an alien race that interbred with humans in the ancient world. Icke referred to them as the ‘Illuminati’.

Over the years, Icke has been accused of anti-semitism, Holocaust denial and fascism.  Yet despite his outlandishness, people still flock to hear him speak in their thousands.

While Icke’s powerful, articulate and emotive delivery (on one occasion he choked back tears as he recounted his own spiritual awakening), drew large cheers at regular intervals, the day was not without some sniggering as he outlined his theories, and more than one audience member walked out.

During the 1980s, Icke was a familiar face on British TV as a sports presenter. But he lost his job in 1991 after publicly claiming to have undergone a spiritual transformation after sessions with a psychic.

He declared himself the ‘son of the Godhead’ and went on to predict that earthquakes and other disasters would wreak havoc upon the earth.

He became a laughing stock in many quarters but after he began writing books and delivering lectures, Icke began to attract an international following.

In Zurich the turnout for his presentation was smaller than in other European cities but organizers were happy.

“We were all very satisfied with the day,” said Swiss Ground Crew co-ordinator Ruth Huber.

“I liked the way people maintained their concentration and listened to more than eight hours of presentation.

“Of course, we would have liked to have seen more guests. We heard that in Amsterdam a couple of months ago, 1,400 people came to essentially the same event with quite short notice.

“But Switzerland is small and very expensive for people to visit from other countries. We’re also well aware that the Swiss tend to be conservative and are often afraid even to listen to somebody not following the mainstream.”

Nevertheless, Ground Crew were able to cover all expenses and pay Icke a small fee for his troubles. Tickets cost 85 francs.

The significance of a Zurich as a hub for many financial organisations Icke accuses of being controlled by the Illuminati, did not go unmentioned in the presentation.

He attacked Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis for being part of an alleged scheme to promote the spread of swine flu.

The company is doing this, he said, to justify compulsory vaccinations containing “fatal chemicals” for the purpose of controlling the world’s population. Icke called it a “war on the human immune system.”

Huber acknowledged that Switzerland does not provide a natural constituency for Icke’s ideas.

“The issue here is that there are very few problems: most people are comfortably off, everything works like clockwork, and there’s very little crime,” she said.

“That doesn’t create a high motivation for listening to radical speakers insisting that the world is in fairly deep trouble.”

Still a figure of controversy and sometimes derision in his home country, Icke has nevertheless touched a nerve with conspiracy theorists, New Age followers and mystics the world over, as well as, importantly, capturing the imagination of many ‘ordinary’ citizens.

He has spent much of the past two decades traversing the globe giving lectures, often encountering opposition along the way. In 1999 he was detained by immigration officials in Canada concerning his possibly inflammatory views – many believe his theory of a reptilian bloodline to be an allegory for Zionist conspiracy, and by lizards he means Jews.

“We are all deeply impressed that this has never made him stop,” Huber said of the ridicule Icke has endured. “He continued his spiritual journey and his research step by step, and that he is now there in a great consciousness and a heart full of love.”

“For us, David Icke is a very brave and principled man who dares to ask questions that others don’t, and who goes right to the point, regardless of whether others think he must be mad.

“He has already gone through every possible personal ridicule, and he has healed himself and continued his task.”

Swiss Ground Crew, based in Zurich, hosts regular talks and events throughout the year.