Alice Walker and the 'lizard Illuminati'

Alice Walker, who's alert to the "Illuminati bloodline families and their puppets" when she sees them on TV

By now if you pay attention to such things, you've probably heard of the resignation latter of Bari Weiss, a controversial New York Times columnist. I'm not going to weigh in on that, at least for now, but there was a sentence in it that caught my eye, because it referenced the Illuminati:

But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati. 

Wait, what?

Alice Walker, as I assume most of you will know, is a famous American writer who won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. 

As far as I can tell, the "lizard Illuminati" reference may be to this "By the Book" interview with Walker that ran in the New York Times:

(As part of a long answer to "What books are on your nightstand?")

“And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke. In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.

I'm not familiar with Icke's work, so Walker's endorsement means nothing to me.

But Vox ran a long explainer, which says, "Icke is best known for arguing that the world is run by a secret cabal of alien lizard people, many of whom are Jewish."

The Vox article says Icke asserts "The world is run by a global elite of Illuminati, and the government, the British royal family, celebrities, and journalists are all in on it." Also, "The Illuminati are the descendants of a race of shape-shifting, blood-drinking, child-sacrificing alien lizard people." Also "Also, vaccines are the Illuminati trying to control us." In fairness, Vox says, "Icke maintains that he is not an anti-Semite, and that he is criticizing not real Jews, but 12-foot-tall alien lizard people, many of whom just happen to be posing as Jews."

Wikipedia has other details about Icke and Walker.  And here is Alice Walker's blog post recommending Icke: "my partner and I go around saying Oh, Chitauri, whenever we get a glimpse of one or two of the Chitauri offspring, aka Illuminati bloodline families and their puppets, on the telly.  It’s quite the stress reliever, just knowing what we’re looking at."