Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More

Author: David Icke
(Copyright 2010, David Icke Books Ltd)

Reviewed by David Wilhelm.

You're a bookstore clerk pondering in which section to place this book. The title, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, gives few clues. Lions? Get Off Your Knees? Sounds like a scene off a bad movie script. You flip to the middle - Neil Hague's vivid, Salvador Dali-meets-Adobe Illustrator glossy-paged graphics - "Science-Fiction"? You read the back-cover: "astounding secrets and suppressed information," and "global Orwellian state." "Politics" section! But under the author's photo you see not a bio but a review by Project Camelot. Kerry Cassidy and Bill Ryan in the Arizona desert... "New Age" section! But yours is a modern bookstore and they got rid of that bookshelf back in the early '90s. You do a quick skim and Bingo! You'll shove it in the "Conspiracy" section. "Conspiracy", a growing genre of literature, fits the bill for this, David Icke's 14th and latest book (published 2010).

The Author

Some background is important here: David Icke is a British writer and lecturer in the field of "alternative" research. He has published at least 14 books and a slew of DVDs. Icke has recorded countless lectures to audiences large and small; from Brixton Academy, London; to Slovenia; to UFO Conferences in L.A. He spoke at Benaroya Hall in Seattle in 2009.

Born on the Isle of Wight off England, Mr. Icke is a nationally known figure in the U.K.: he played football professionally in the '80s, was a popular BBC presenter for a time on their most-watched sports show; and he was the UK Green Party National Spokesman. Currently, Icke is particularly well known in the UFO-research community for his Conspiracy research and on the "interdimensional entity" (alien) phenomenon (Children of the Matrix, 2003).

His lectures typically focus on spiritual self-help coupled with very hard-hitting critiques of politics, culture, globalization, the media, academia; and 9/11 and the Middle-East conflicts. His renown in America grew with the 2002 publication of Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster: Why the official story of 9/11 is a Monumental Lie.

Human Race: An Intro

Human Race Get Off Your Knees reads like a compendium of Icke's earlier material. The subject matter is esoteric and metaphysical, but its style is conversational and unpretentious - though equally verbose and often repetitious. At 645 pages, topics range from political and economic conspiracy theories to physics to space and extraterrestrials (ETs), to the nature of reality. An ambitious scope, but David Icke is an ambitious man. One gets the feeling that if Icke hadn't a deadline he'd have turned Human Race into an encyclopedia! Indeed, finding a topic on which he doesn't have an opinion becomes difficult as the reader journeys down "through the Rabbit Hole", to borrow a trademark phrase from his lectures.

Importantly, Icke shows his characteristic sardonic, tongue-in-cheek humour. He knows the subject-matter is far-out and could not retain an audience for long if he did not.

A note of caution: With this kind of writing - the polemic - in the end we as the reader retain the final choice as to whether we are reading science-fiction or "alternative research." You will see what I mean as we investigate the subject matter.

In Section I of the book, we read historical speculation: "Before the [earth] cataclysms, there was a global society based on a common religion and knowledge."

We read facts: "Goldman Sachs paid [Larry] Summers $135,000 for a single day's 'appearance' in 2008."

PROBLEM - REACTION - SOLUTION

Chapters four through 9 deal with the "global conspiracy." We read about the history of the so-called Illuminati and the Rothschilds and Rockefellers (Chapters 4 - 7). [See also The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy and How to End It.] We follow the trail of "the expansion of the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian (Illuminati) bloodlines into Europe...(p. 57). cke's views on the machinations of world power conjure Orwell, though Icke ventures further, delving into history and science alike for fresh answers and pieces the puzzle. His view on how the power structures control populations and perpetuate their power rests on his theory "Problem - Reaction - Solution" - a solid framework for explaining world events. This, he believes, was the key to 9/11, and why globalization of commerce and surveillance spreads unchecked.

The "Illuminati", or "bloodline families" as he terms it, makes for intriguing reading. Mr. Icke begins with a historical synopsis of the Sumer/Babylon origins of the Illuminati, pointing to the historical region of Khazar as the destination of some of the "Sumerian" "bloodline families," namely the Rothschilds, who eventually went north and west to Europe. These chapters deal with what Icke terms "Rothschild Zionism" (from the infamous European Rothschild family). For Mr. Icke, the Rothschilds ("Redshield" in German) are a major key to the puzzle of the current global power game: they control the purse strings: "You simply cannot understand the global conspiracy without knowing [their] background..."We are led to believe that the Rothschilds are a family of biblical Jews and therefore originate in Old Testament Egypt and Israel [p. 79]."

But, Sumerian and Babylonian peoples migrated north into an area near the Caucasus" as well as east, eventually forming the kingdom of Khazaria...AD 740, the King...adopted the religion of Judaism and the whole nation [did likewise]." [T]hese converts to Judaism moved north to become the East European Jewish communities...Among them were the Rothschilds [p. 79].

Science-fiction?

We read about "The Moon Matrix," how our brains are decoding false "vibrational information" transmitted from the moon (what Icke calls "The Moon Matrix," Chapter 19/p. 405) - information "hacked" from its "mother" source, the Sun. Icke uses our modern wireless Internet as a metaphor for how our brains decode energetic information into physical reality. This "virtual" reality is the premise behind Icke's fantastical, science-fiction inspired ideas: the "holographic Universe"; the "body-computer"; "The Cosmic Internet"; The "Moon-Matrix," etc.

Human Race Get Off Your Knees is exciting fodder for UFO-enthusiast and government conspiracy theorist alike: The Reptilians and the Greys began the process of manipulating the human-energy field, or body, to control humanity's sense of reality, and humans experienced an ever-degenerating state of awareness (p. 228)

Icke concludes that "Humans are sustenance to the Reptilians - we are their food source" (p. 287) and control us via "hacked" information transmitted from the moon ("the Moon Matrix"). As "interdimensional entities", these "Reptilians" are the dark culprit - a constantly recurring theme and key premise to the book (see also Knight, Christopher, and Butler, Alan: Who Built The Moon?. Watkins 2007). The Reptilian theme, interwoven with many othe sub-topics throughout, takes the cake as main idea of Human Race Get Off Your Knees.

Mr. Hague's trippy, 32-page color graphic interlude comes as a useful visual aid to the writing, and divides the book into roughly two sections: the latter section deals with
1) The "controllers' "Game Plan[s]" against humanity, and
2) How best we, humanity, can thwart them.

Conclusion

Problem is, many will agree wholeheartedly with 90% of Icke's ideas (particularly the sections on corporations, "the control structure", and Icke's theory of "Problem-Reaction-Solution"...) - until he gets to the "Reptilian" issue. This is problematic because Icke rests so much else on that premise. This is the number one sticking point for the book. The alternate approach here is, again, to read on and take what you will and leave the rest.

The book is organized somewhat haphazardly, though much of this is new material, yet to be worked out even by scientists \ or full-time specialists, so we can forgive Mr. Icke for jumping around a bit. In an Internet-age, Human Race reflects a web-format/blogosphere style - but a book is a book. One criticism is Icke's use of sources - unlike his previous works, this time the author eschews end-of-chapter references, using only a bibliography (65 citations total). Easily twice as many sources are found in-text, but they are not formally cited.

David Icke is stubborn and stands his ground. The sense is that he does not want to be wrong. He seeks to cover all bases. In his defense, Icke presents so much material that doing so, along with perfect CMOS citations - on a deadline - would be near to impossible for any author. The obvious sticking point with Human Race is that the flow of the book is such that if you don't accept one premise, the author leaves fewer and fewer outlets for agreeing to the overall thread.

In summary, the scope may be too grand for one book. But, to his credit, Mr. Icke forges on with fortitude: I know Icke would agree with what Socrates said, "Follow the evidence, wehrever it leads." Fortunately, we also get Icke's trademark "New Age"-esque optimism (Section II: "The Lion Foils the Game Plan"): "Unmanifest 'Oneness' is where we find love in its true sense and so Infinite Love is the only truth, everything else is illusion" (p. 389).

Thus, it is possible to read the book without agreeing with everything Mr. Icke says. That being said, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More must be read with a very open mind. - David G. Wilhelm January 2011