I must admit that hearing that some people believe in the existence of ‘lizard people’ took me by surprise, even though you would think that by now I would have become accustomed to hearing that people believe in all manner of fantastical ideas. So what is this theory and how did it originate? Cultural historian Lynn Stuart Parramore walks us through this strange world that has anti-Semitic roots. She says that while the theory is undoubtedly bonkers, it is definitely not harmless.
The world-ruled-by-lizard-people fantasy shot to prominence in recent years in part through the ramblings of David Icke, a popular British sports reporter-turned-conspiracy theorist known for his eccentric ideas.
Icke would have you believe that a race of reptilian beings not only invaded Earth, but that it also created a genetically modified lizard-human hybrid race called the “Babylonian Brotherhood,” which, he maintains, is busy plotting a worldwide fascist state. This sinister cabal of global reptilian elites boasts a membership list including former President Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Mick Jagger.
Ok, I’ll grant that Mick Jagger could well be a lizard person. He is clearly not human. How else can you explain that a near-octogenarian is still able to prance around the stage for three hour-rock concerts, belting out songs with the vigor of someone one-third his age? But the others?
Parramore digs into the origins of this belief.
The writings of the Russian-born mystic Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, bristle with cosmic energies and mysterious knowledge — including her claim of an ancient race of dragon men from a lost continent mentioned in her esoteric 1888 tome, “The Secret Doctrine.”
…Blavatsky’s florid imagination influenced a slew of artists and writers, including, as political scientist Michael Barkun notes, one Robert E. Howard. His widely popular “Conan the Barbarian” stories in the early 20th century featured reptilian humanoids who deploy their shape-changing and mind-control talents to dominate humanity.
…It may not surprise you that Icke, who wrote a theosophical work about the origins of Earth, also endorses the infamous anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which appeared in 1903 and was likely created by the Russian czar’s secret police. Henry Ford, for one, helped circulate the pamphlet, which purported to reveal a secret Jewish society conspiring to control the banks, the media and, ultimately, the entire Earth. Though it was quickly discredited, the Nazis used it as propaganda.
Icke denies animosity toward Jewish people. But whether he is or isn’t deliberately using the notion of reptilian invaders as coded anti-Semitism, it is nonetheless the case that the idea tends to circulate, as writer Miikka Jaarte points out, among neo-Nazis, Illuminati conspiracy proponents and various other groups that insist that we are being manipulated by sinister “puppeteers” who often just happen to be Jewish. Billionaire George Soros is a frequent bête noire among this crowd, and he is often depicted as a world-dominating reptile.
…The lizard takeover, with its Jewish-cabal links, has, unfortunately, become so commonplace that it even made an appearance in Netflix’s hit sci-fi series “The Umbrella Academy” — now taking some heat for its alleged use of anti-Semitic tropes in the form of a shadowy society of lizard people who run the world, complete with a Yiddish-speaking villain.
Parramore says that outlandish theories seem to flourish at times “when panic is rising, institutions seem to be failing and the masses feel betrayed by wealthy elites” because it enables people to fixate on scapegoats for their problems, and this can be dangerous.
The idea that the world is rigged against ordinary people and in favor of wealthy elites is not wrong. But people find it hard to grasp the more abstract mechanisms at work, that this is because of the working out of capitalism that creates a class of people who share the same goal of enriching themselves and have achieved high levels of power and influence and thus the ability to rig the rules of society to benefit themselves. Once this class dominates the major institutions of society, most things are done largely in the open. They do not need secret cabals or shapeshifting bodies but such a model is easier to understand and thus more likely to be seized on, once you have abandoned any commitment to science-based thinking and given yourself over to fantasies.
It would be interesting to see if the people who believe in the lizard people idea are also believers in gods and other forms of the supernatural because you need some sort of gateway to fantastical thinking.
Yep, totally the sort of thing lizards do all the time. But people? Not a chance.
Elites may not have an actual “need” for secret cabals in some cases, but I’m sure those are still very useful. You’d have to abandon a whole lot of evidence about boring old human beings, if you’re going to reject that.
“It would be interesting to see if the people who believe in the lizard people idea are also believers in gods and other forms of the supernatural”
It’s been my observation that such nonsense tends to be an alternative to such other nonsense, rather than running in parallel.
” “The Umbrella Academy” — now taking some heat…”
… from people taking a fantasy WAY too seriously. It’s a show with a talking chimp, a mind controlling model, a pansexual necromancer and a man with the torso of a gorilla. It’s also self consciously woke by any reasonable standard (at least the first two seasons are). Anyone giving it heat is paying zero fucking attention to the rest of television, much less the world.
I was well into adulthood when I first encountered words like “oligarchy” and “kleptocracy”. (Thanks to Jared Diamond for the latter.) Studying engineering in college, my first time around, left me extremely ignorant about a lot of important things. Well, important for a citizen participating in a democratic government.
My ignorance extended to not realizing that there is a conspiracy about actual lizard-human hybrids. I always thought references I’ve read about “lizard people” were a joke. Which they were, but I didn’t realize that people actually do believe in them. Sigh.
Maybe it counts as some sort of social progress that these aren’t known as “lizard-men” scenarios.
For further research (though involving different conspiracies), please consider Eric Garcia’s Anonymous Rex, set in a world where several species of dinosaurs survived the asteroid but shrank down to human size, allowing them to blend into the H. sap population by wearing latex suits, as narrated by a velociraptor seedy private eye.
The novels also include Casual Rex and Hot and Sweaty Rex, plus a series on the Sci-Fi Channel -- all funnier yet more realistic than the lizard-people stories.
I have it on good authority (John Constantine) that the British Royal family are lizard people.
So, having seen both seasons and not spotted anything anti -- semitic, I looked up the allegations. It amounts to this :one villain speaks some Yiddish. She also speaks Mandarin, Swedish and English, but apparently speaking Yiddish while being a villain =anti-Semitic. It’s this kind of brittle bullshit offence-tourism that makes even anti -- racists think “oh do fuck off”.
It is unutterably depressing that the Jewish writer of the show had to waste his time responding to that bollocks.
Well, it seems to be a common pattern. In order to “explain” the workings of the world, what’s better than imagining a hidden, alien hand? If you are a total loon, that is.
The best contribution in this field (among many) was probably this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Szukalski
an excellent artist who, at a certain point, went seriously off the rails -- but never lost his impressive talent. Enjoy, and be befuddled.
Umbrella Academy wasn’t the story I thought of at first. The primary story I remember is the V miniseries. I forget if the redo of it later on kept with the lizard people idea but the original certainly did and it felt like it had a lot higher profile than a Netflix show.
@5 Pierce R. Butler
Several did, and we see them flying about.
Supremely cunning of the birds to have distracted everyone from their control of the world order by pinning the blame on the lizard people.
It’s always interesting to see where people intersect with stuff you’ve known about for ‘ages’. It used to make it all fun and exciting, now less so.
A brief summary: People who believe in one alt-med thing or one conspiracy thing are more likely to believe in others or at minimum tolerate them. At least that is what the research showed back when I cared to pay attention. As for believing in specific gods, unlikely, but at least the alt-med side of conspiracy stuff also goes hand in hand with spirituality stuff. It’s unclear what the causal relationship is, but at least it was common to believe that if someone turns off their brain for one thing, they have an easier time to turn it off for other things. I am less certain of that, given that people on ‘our’ side of various fences fall for stupid stuff all the time as well.
I forget what episodes, but there are some old episodes of Skeptics with a K where they visit a variety of conspiracy or alt-med events and talk to people attending. Those are worth checking out if you are interested in the overlap between the various angles and intersection of the phenomenons, similarly interviews on Be Reasonable highlight some of the same if you have the mental fortitude to sit through those without throwing your listening device through a wall.
Also, the Vietnam episode of Umbrella Academy Season 1 was amazing. I should probably finish that show at some point.