Is This The Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory Of All? | Unveiled

Is This the Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory of All?

Conspiracy theories are everywhere in the modern era. Constantly debated across the media, it seems that everyone has at least one they believe in – even if they may not admit it. But are there some that, for all their apparent ridiculousness, have deadly implications?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: is this the most DANGEROUS conspiracy theory of all?

Increasingly common in the western world is the strange belief that a race of “reptilian humanoids”, “lizard people”, or “reptoids”, has somehow infiltrated the upper echelons of Earth society. These lizards are disguised as humans, as powerful figures like the Bush family, the British royals, Obama, and so on, but they’re wearing skin suits or shapeshifting to keep their true, reptilian nature hidden. They work in opposition to the best interests of humanity; a clandestine operation to seize and maintain power, enrich themselves, control us all, and even drink our blood. It’s all too easy to point and laugh at the people who believe this theory, but their ranks may be growing. In 2016, polling found that 12 million Americans believe the reptilian humanoid theory. That’s 4% of the total population. Many more believe that, contrary to the world of conflict and competition we see with our own eyes around us, some shadowy organization – the Illuminati, for instance - is behind world events.

Silly as it all might sound, conspiracy theories are far from harmless. The reptilian conspiracy theory echoes 19th and 20th-century conspiracies that Jewish people secretly control the world’s banks and media. This is often called the “international Jewish conspiracy” and has existed for a long time, popularized by a fabricated text published in 1903 called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. It was exposed as fraudulent in the 1920s, but the Nazis made constant reference to this conspiracy in their propaganda, and used it as a way to justify the Holocaust, with Nazi high command alleging that they were acting in self-defense against Jews to protect German society. Nazi Germany certainly didn’t invent antisemitism, however; Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years, so much so that many Jewish holidays revolve around surviving in the face of crimes against them. You can already see the link between these older and more obvious theories and the modern-day lizard example, but it’s still a complex journey to go from outright antisemitism to a theory about reptiles in disguise.

Even the most absurd part of the reptilian humanoid conspiracy, the blood-drinking, has its origins in anti-Jewish history. Just like the reptilian people, Jews were accused countless times over many centuries of sacrificing and drinking the blood of Christian children, which Jews began to call the “blood libel”. These were often children who had gone missing, and whose disappearances it was easier to blame on convenient scapegoats. When children went missing in some parts of England in the 12th century, Jewish communities, already marginalized and distrusted, were the first to receive the blame. The “blood libel”, eventually spread across continental Europe, too, embedding antisemitism in European society, leading to executions, the establishment of ghettos, and even pogroms. And we can’t stress enough that there’s absolutely no evidence that any Jewish communities ever committed acts of this nature. As the name suggests, the “blood libel” is just that, libel, concocted to slander Jews and justify mob violence against them. And yet, that lie still persists, even in the 21st century.

But why alien reptiles, of all the things? Well, the idea of intelligent reptiles has been common in science-fiction for the last century, appearing from time to time in the pulps, and even sometimes in the context of a shadowy conspiracy. But the man responsible for the theory today is former footballer and sports broadcaster David Icke, a well-known conspiracy theorist. As well as more or less inventing the lizard theory, Icke also believes that there’s a link between 5G and Covid-19, that the moon is an alien spaceship that manipulates us, that the Illuminati are to blame for global warming, and so on. He’s been so consistently discredited that as early as the 1990s, legitimate publishers refused to publish his work. As far as the reptiles are concerned, Icke claims that these reptilian humanoids come from the Alpha Draconis star system, more commonly known as Thuban. This is a real star system roughly 300 lightyears away from us, but it’s been latched onto by Icke because it has a convenient name. In reality, there’s no current evidence that it hosts intelligent life. We haven’t even found any exoplanets there. More worryingly, Icke cites “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a main source for his beliefs. He claims that, contrary to what the text states, it’s really about reptiles, not Jewish people.

Again, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is forged, something that’s been known for a century. It was produced in Russia in the early 1900s, forming the bedrock that the “international Jewish conspiracy” is based on. However, it was quickly shown to be fraudulent, plagiarizing a French political satire and other sources. So, why was it disguised and republished in 1903, and for what purpose? Well, much like the blood libel, to find a scapegoat for real systemic issues. First, it was the disappearances of children, but this time, it was for the failings of the Russian Empire, which had generated growing unrest. The idea of scapegoating Jews didn’t work. In 1914, war broke out in Europe, military losses led to mutinies, and the situation ultimately exploded with the Russian Revolution in 1917. In 1918, less than a year after the Bolsheviks seized power, Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed. Even though only 10% of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, the “Protocols” were used to blame Jews for the revolution.

This is a legacy Jews still have to grapple with today, with “Protocols” described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as “the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times”. Over the centuries, antisemitism had become so rife in Europe and the US that, in 1942, a ship full of Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi occupation was turned away by the US government because of unsubstantiated paranoia that they might by German spies.

Not all the people that reptilian conspiracy theorists accuse of being lizards are Jewish, but some of them are - George Soros, for example. And the cultural anxiety around people potentially being something other than they claim has reached a fever pitch in the past. The Spanish Inquisition was founded to persecute ‘heretics’ among Jews and Muslims who had converted to Catholicism, but secretly continued to practice their original faith. Many had converted to avoid violence and expulsion. The Inquisition tortured, expelled, and executed them in their thousands.

Shockingly, in 2019, a far-right extremist was even charged with murdering his own brother after becoming convinced he was a lizard person. The man was also a believer in QAnon and proclaimed himself a member of the Proud Boys. What looks innocent at first can quickly prove to be nothing of the sort. Social media is rife with jokes and memes about the conspiracy theory, but it can be dangerous for people who are vulnerable.

Critics of the reptilian conspiracy theory label it a dog whistle - coded language that might seem innocuous at first glance, but communicates very specific ideas to people within its intended audience. For example, modern Neo-Nazi groups, which still exist and are active around the western world, use dog whistles to create plausible deniability around their beliefs, so that ordinary people don’t cotton on to their true beliefs.

The idea that lizard people walk among us can seem ridiculous. But the theory, believed by millions of Americans, harkens back to extremely dangerous propaganda, linked to the persecution of the Jewish people. Hitler used the Protocols that David Icke relies on to kill six million Jews in the biggest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. And that’s why reptilian humanoids IS the most dangerous conspiracy theory of all.