We read ‘The Light’ so you don’t have to: Issue 39

We plan to produce summaries looking at each issue of The Light. Below we look at Issue 39 from November 2023, which continues to promote false claims on climate – as we have we have written about previously.

This month, that includes the following articles:

Page 14-15: ‘What they Really Mean by ‘Net Zero’’ (no named author)

Falsely asserts that “Carbon dioxide has zero effect on temperatures” (we’ve pointed to some of the ample scientific evidence showing otherwise previously). The piece argues that all efforts to tackle climate change are simply a corrupt elite controlling our lives and freedoms. The article appears to frame attempts to reduce car use and increasing train use, or to increase energy efficiency and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, as bad things.

Page 13 ‘Ultimate Goal is Dependency’ (Gary D. Barnett, a retired financial advisor who also writes for extreme right ‘Lew Rockwell’)  and ‘Future of Freedom Foundation’.)

An ‘Opinion’ piece on how we are apparently experiencing slavery on a mass level. Describes ‘the farcical fraud called man-made climate change’ – according to him measures to tackle the climate emergency are a communist takeover plot and extreme weather events either didn’t happen at all or were initiated by the New World Order. Also suggests food shortages are a myth.

As well as articles, there are also adverts pushing denial that human activity leads to climate change – for the Lois Carborn Insistute, Free Citizen UK, and creativesociety.com. The latter is a prolific pro-Putin, climate change denial and disinformation group that operates under the pretext of working for the global good. It runs a network of more than 200 accounts across social media platforms. The melting of glaciers are linked to ‘cosmic pulses of galactic interactions’. On Facebook, it has paid to promote videos describing renewable energies as a “scam”.

These continued false claims on climate undermine the social movements that are protesting and demanding action from governments and corporations, and divide our communities as we try to reduce our contributions to global warming, and try to build resilience to the crises to come – as we’ve written previously.

But it’s not only the information on climate change that’s dodgy. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the other content in this issue.

Page 1: ’WHO’ rules the world (no named author)

Most of the content is lifted from a right wing ‘Christian Broadcasting Network’ (CBN) interview with Trumpist politician Michelle Bachmann (who supports increasing drilling for oil and refuses to rule out a nuclear strike on Iran among other strongly conservative positions). While there’s plenty to scrutinise in the WHO proposals relating to pandemic preparedness, ‘The Light’s usual cherry picking, oversimplification, fearmongering bias is here in full force. (why is the word pandemic in inverted commas?). The CBN was founded by Pat Robertson – notorious for vile anti-LGBTQ+ commentary and for writing the book on ‘New World Order’ conspiracies in which the Illuminati, the New Age movement and – of course – Jewish bankers – were being guided by Satan to bring about the ‘end times’.

Human Rights organisation Liberty has some balanced and informative content on International and national positions on mandatory vaccines and passports, without the right wing bias.

Page 2: ‘Medical crisis declaration’ (Darren Smith – editor of The Light)

States that ‘More than 400 doctors, scientists and professionals’ have signed the declaration. In reality, anyone can sign the declaration without verification of credentials. Includes an unverified ‘graph’ made by ‘ethicalskeptic’, who also climate change denial ‘graphs’. 

Page 3: More ‘Great Reset’/ global elite / WEF agenda plot to erode capitalism and our freedoms stuff, present in every issue

Page 5: ‘Democracy a failed experiment’ (Lance Peatling)

Libertarian ‘Sovereign Citizen’ stuff, claims democracy is tyranny and “true power rests, after all, in each of us individually, and in our ability to persuade.” The piece is copied from the authors blog, where he also writes of the many hedge funds he was worked at.

Page 9 ‘How to Avoid Digital Slavery’ 

Advert for a book published by the ‘White Rose’. A  group with links to white supremacist groups whose content is chock full of antisemitic tropes. The group’s name misappropriates the name the anti-Nazi White Rose group. And here in this title it misappropriates the term slavery.

Page 10 Shane Fudge interview with Richard Vobes. Shane Fudge also regularly writes for the right wing pseudoscience website ‘The Daily Skeptic’ and far-right ‘The Conservative Woman’, and interviewed David Kurten from ‘Heritage Party’ a couple of issues back. Vobes has recently been heavily pushing “15 minute city” paranoia.

Page 11 ‘Battle of the Naomis’ – An abysmally written ‘review’ of Naomi Klein’s book, Doppelgänger by Andrew Barr.

Massive amount of cherry picking that dishonestly skews the tone of the book and the points it makes. Suggests Klein would do better by following Wolf’s ‘path of enlightenment’ (becoming a gun-toting ‘patriot’ and appearing on alt-right platforms alongside Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon?). Barr is another regular contributor to The Daily Skeptic, created by Toby Young – associate editor of the right wing Spectator – known as a controversialist and for promoting eugenics.

Page 12 ‘Psychology’ section: NLP: Focusing on the Positives (Richard House)

Glorified advert for David Molden’s Neurolinguistic Programming books, along with advice from Molden, who is apparently a ‘certified NLP trainer’ alongside being a ‘freedom musician and anti-5G campaigner’. it’s unclear what his actual qualifications are but the practice of NLP has been heavily criticised and discredited by professional psychologists.

Page 16 ‘Shocking History of Hamas’ (Rodney Atkinson) and 17 ‘Exploring Motives for Slaughter’ (David Wilson)

A muddled but not entirely objectionable account of the background to the current round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza by Rowan Atkinson’s less funny arch-Brexiteer brother Rodney, who somehow manages to use Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections as an opportunity to bash European institutions. Facing it on P17 is a longer piece which recycles unsubstantiated and implausible conspiracy theories that the Israelis knew the 7th October attack by Hamas was coming but allowed it to go ahead so that they would have an “excuse” for their assault on Gaza. 

Page 18: ‘Failed referendum cost $450m’ (Malcolm Turnbull, former prime minister of Australia). This article is lifted from the website of Australia’s extreme right wing ‘One Nation’ Party.

Ex Prime Minister’s of Australia’s critique of the current administration’s direction and fiscal choices. States the Indigenous Voice Referendum and net zero initiatives have been a virtue signalling waste of time and money. ‘Man of the people’ Turnbull (now worth over 200million, he was once Australia’s richest parliamentarian) ends by saying the only solution for Australians during the cost of living crisis is to vote for the nationalist, populist ‘One Nation’ party. 

Page 19: another anti-5G article, ‘How to Stop the 5G Rollout’. 

Page 20: another anti-medicine article, ‘Medicines can Destroy Health’.

Page 22: ‘Do They Want to be our Gods?’ (Ben Hunt via the far right American site ‘Red Pill Revolution’)

Sort of stream of consciousness article on power and the human soul. Who are the ‘they’ and the ‘mass culture’ ‘controllers’ who are ‘harvesting our souls’ he is referring to, I wonder?! Much talk of men: ‘men’s search for meaning’ ‘the race of pious men’ that is gone.

Page 23 (letters page) letter from Malcolm Taylor: “the strength of Zionist capitalism and political influence in the West is deep and widespread” – back to the antisemitic tropes from ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ again.

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Read our previous summaries:

Things “The Light” Wants You to Dislike (Issue 32)

We read it so you don’t have to: Issue 34 of “The Light”