REPTILIANS

The reptilian conspiracy: Our secret overlords?!

Most well-known conspiracies are rooted, even if only distantly, in fact: A blurry video, redacted government memos, a tragic real-life occurrence. But one of our absolute favorite conspiracies is one that is rooted in practically nothing, one that is so delightfully bonkers and out there that the idea of people actually believing in it strains belief. Behold: The lizard people!

The reptilian conspiracy

Lizard people are a common part of multiple folklore traditions and they show up frequently enough in fiction to have become a trope if you’re generous, a cliché if you’re less so. From ancient myths all over the world to various cryptozoological claims to the foundational level of a lot of the more bonkers conspiracies to appearances in books, television, movies and more, lizard people are clearly ingrained in our subconscious as well as the zeitgeist.

But how do you get from a common element in myth and fiction to a major worldwide conspiracy theory? One that claims that all aspects of government, business and religion are guided, if not outright controlled, by secret reptilian overlords masquerading as human beings? It’s a wild leap, and you don’t see anything similar with say, satyrs and fauns. So, how did we get there? The answer is one man: David Icke.

Initially a professional soccer player, Icke later transitioned into a sports broadcaster after arthritis put an early end to his sports career. By the late 1980s, however, Icke had grown increasingly political, becoming heavily involved with the British Green Party while also taking an interest in various New Age philosophies, specifically psychic abilities, culminating in a mystical experience at an ancient pre-Incan burial site.

Resigning from the Green Party, Icke began to position himself as a kind of psychic, predicting various natural disasters and even the end of the world itself in 1997 (none of which have come true). Eventually, however, his wild claims, particularly the one stating that he was the son of the godhead, caught up with him, as he became a figure of public ridicule. Two years after his purported end of the world, however, is when Icke’s story gets really interesting.

That’s because it was 1999 that saw the publication of Icke’s book, The Biggest Secret. It was this book that made the outlandish claim that human beings were created by reptilian aliens known as the Anunnaki. The tome also put forth several other ideas, many of which will seem familiar to anyone who has seen The Matrix movies, but for our purposes, it’s the lizard people claim that is most fascinating.

Icke blew out his theory in such a way as to be not just compatible, but actually helpful for every other conspiracy theory. By claiming that the reptilians were ancient aliens that controlled the planet as part of a New World Order, while hiding behind the world’s most powerful and wealthy families, Icke created a framework that could be used to prop up every conspiracy theory from the JFK assassination to the origins of the atomic bomb to your neighbor’s alleged alien abduction. This malleability has been a massive part of the conspiracy’s resiliency.

Additionally, the lizard people conspiracy also gives conspiracy theorists a way out. As explanations get more and more complex and require more and more mental acrobatics to justify them, eventually, a conspiracy theorist can just shrug and claim that it’s just reptilians all the way down.

Icke also connected his reptoid hypothesis to the aforementioned folklore and myths, as the Anunnaki have their root in the creation story of Babylonian mythology. And the reptilian’s home underground? That plays in nicely to both hollow earth theories as well as indigenous American stories about subterranean lizard people.

But it doesn’t stop there! The lizard people conspiracy is a massive, massive tent, one that welcomes and synthesizes all other conspiracies. Think there’s a secretive Satanic cabal ruling the earth? Well, they’re actually just lizard people practicing black magic. Concerned about the Rothschilds and Rockefellers? Clearly lizard people. Believe in pseudoscience extrapolations of quantum mechanics and string theory? Yup, those other dimensions are where lizard people come from.

Despite all the claims of Icke and his supporters, however, despite the myriad of other conspiracies that the reptoid hypothesis touches upon, builds off of or attempts to confirm, there is absolute no actual evidence to support the existence of reptilian overlords ruling our lives. You might think that this lack of evidence would cause this particular conspiracy theory to die a quick death…but somewhat counterintuitively, it’s this lack of evidence that has allowed the theory to cling to life so effectively.

Without any real evidence, with only “Well, it makes sense if you think about it!” to back it up, those wishing to debunk this particular theory are left with a difficult task. Sure, there’s not any hard evidence to suggest the existence of lizard people, but can you prove that there aren’t any? Bertrand Russell’s teapot analogy addresses this, illustrating that the burden of proof lies with the person making an unfalsifiable claim, not the person trying to disprove it. But, not exactly shockingly, believers in the reptoid hypothesis aren’t entirely up on their mid-20th century British philosophers.

So, with no one able to actually disprove the theory, with no evidence to debunk, with a basis in multiple world religion, folklore and mythic traditions, with a connection to practically any other conspiracy imaginable and with people primed for the theory by countless lizard people across all aspects of pop culture…is it any wonder that Icke’s absolutely, 100% bonkers reptoid hypothesis has proven so durable?

What do you think? Is Icke’s reptoid hypothesis simply a wide-reaching synthesis of every other conspiracy, a clever framework into which to drop whatever an individual wants? Or, despite how bizarre it all seems, is there some truth to alien lizard people pulling the strings of all human endeavors? Tell us down below in the comments!