Quick takeaway: Resist the urge to make casual “lizard people” jokes even though it seems like it’s just a harmless, out-there conspiracy to reference for funzies.

Most people aren’t aware that concept is related to a specific set of beliefs developed by a specific person: David Icke. As these conspiracies tend to do, his veer straight into deeply, classically antisemitic tropes except replace “Jews” with “shapeshifting aliens posing as Jews (and sometimes non-Jews):

For almost everyone, when they make a lizard joke about Mark Zuckerberg, all they mean is “haha, I don’t like Zuckerberg, and his pursuit of wealth under capitalism at the expense of global society is inhuman”

What they don’t mean but do end up saying is, “Check out some more ideas by the same dude who thinks the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are legitimate, that (aliens pretending to be) Jews were responsible for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and Holocaust, and that those ‘shape-shifting reptilians’ like B’nai B’rith are the ones actually in control of racist terrorist groups like the KKK.”

Thankfully the Christmas Day Nashville bomber only killed himself but that wasn’t guaranteed. Who knows what the next one will target.

Dogwhistles work a lot better when other people are using the same ones naively, so get better informed about this one and don’t give other people cover for it:

• News article: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/girlfriend-nashville-bomber-warned-police-he-was-building-explosives-2019-n1252536
• Breakdown of David Icke’s antisemitic beliefs: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-new-york-times-just-published-an-unqualified-recommendation-for-an-insanely-anti-semitic-book
• Overview of antisemitic conspiracies more generally: https://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/11782