Marking Holocaust Memorial Day in Stroud, 29th January 2023

Community Solidarity Stroud District has organised a Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) ceremony which will take place on Sunday 29th January from 2-3pm in Park Gardens (by the War Memorial). There will be music from The Stroud Red Band, and speakers from our group, from Stroud Against Racism, and from other members of the community.

Thanks to Stroud News & Journal for covering the HMD event. As they report, “Speakers from local antiracist and faith groups will make short speeches, including the Kaddish – the Jewish prayer of remembrance, to remember the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis, as well as the victims of other genocides. The event will be led by Reverend Simon Howell of St Laurence’s church, and Leader of Stroud District Council Catherine Braun will also speak.”

Jeremy Green, a member of our group and one of the organisers said:

“For me, the point of Holocaust Memorial Day is to remember what fascism was able to make ordinary people do to their fellow humans. Many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were not monsters or sadists, just normal people doing what they felt was their duty.”

“We need to remember what happened, in the heart of “civilised” Europe, to one “civilised” people at the hands of another “civilised” people, with all of the resources of a modern industrial state, to make sure that it can never happen again.”

Holocaust Memorial Day marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, on the 27th January.

This year the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day is “Ordinary People”. As the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust say:

“Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren’t persecuted because of crimes they’ve committed – they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group (eg, Roma, Jewish community, Tutsi)…

There are also extraordinary people in every genocide, remarkable and unusual people, who went to extreme lengths to help, to rescue, to save, and in every genocide there were extraordinary people, who went to extreme depths to cause harm, to persecute, to murder.

Our theme this year, though, highlights the ordinary people who let genocide happen, the ordinary people who actively perpetrated genocide, and the ordinary people who were persecuted.

Our theme will also prompt us to consider how ordinary people, such as ourselves, can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.”

HMD Trust website, 2023 theme page

For details of other events marking Holocaust Memorial Day, and information about the Holocaust and other genocides, please see the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust facebook page, and their website at: www.hmd.org.uk.

If you use Facebook, please invite friends to the Holocaust Memorial Day – Stroud event, and let us know you plan to attend, via the link.

Challenging denial, disinformation and stigma on World AIDS day

Today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day – held annually since 1988. This year, we want to draw attention to and express our solidarity with those who took part in a die-in protest held by ACT UP London today, echoing a protest conducted in 1989. Stav Bee, ACT UP activist, is quoted by ACT UP London in their press release about the World AIDS Day die-in saying: “It is the 21st century and although a lot has changed, some has not and it’s in urgent need of elimination, via education, laws and radical and direct action. I am talking about the stigma of HIV and AIDS which is still prevalent in many countries including the West. This ignorance and apathy is dangerous and unacceptable. Therefore, as a gay political woman, I support and participate in direct action, radical and using my body. I yearn for an HIV/AIDS free world, full of knowledge, acceptance, kindness and love. For all people of all persuasions affected by the politics of the virus and the virus. And I bellow: ACT UP, Fight back, Fight AIDS!” 

We also want to take the opportunity to address the misinformation about HIV/AIDS that is presented in The Light – the contrarian paper distributed nationally – including by the ‘Stroud Info Hug’ stall that is present on Stroud High Street almost every week. Briefly, The Light promotes the theories of people who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS, or that it was a manufactured virus, or see it not as a virus that has led to disease and death for millions of people and emotional harm and trauma for whole communities as a result, but as a part of a plot to control people – connecting it to wider paranoid ideas about the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic similarly being conspiracies to control rather than causes of death and disability. Read on below the graphic for our full article.

To provide a few examples – in the latest issue (27) contains a front page banner advertising an article inside with the text “HIV was the rehearsal for COVID”. The page 3 article, by Serena Wylde includes the false claims that HIV was laboratory made, that there is no causal link between HIV and AIDS (or indeed between viruses and disease at all) and that “the persistence of the theory that HIV causes AIDS is attributable entirely to the campaign of fear, discrimination and terror that has been waged by a powerful group of people whose sole motivation was and is behaviour control.” This is denial of reality, pure and simple – known as HIV/AIDS denialism. The claims are based on a mixture of dodgy reasoning and misinterpretation, and pseudoscience, and have been thoroughly debunked by scientists. The ideas aren’t harmless – the adoption of HIV/AIDS denialist ideas by the South African government through Thabo Mbeki have been estimated to have led to 330,000 to 340,000 AIDS-related deaths by public health researchers. And as well as discouraging people who are infected from utilising effective treatments, HIV/AIDS deniers routinely stigmatise those with the disease – explaining it not through viral infection but by victim-blaming.

This is the case in Issue 24 where Jo Waller writes that AIDS is “a collection of symptoms caused by oxidation, poppers, drugs, malnutrition and poverty, and not by ‘HIV’. AIDS cannot be sexually transmitted by ‘HIV’?.  Indeed on page 20 of the same issue, Dawn Lester and David Parker go so far as to claim there is “No such thing as a sexually transmitted disease” (the headline of their piece). These false ideas might sound bizarre, but – again – it’s easy to see how they can lead to harm if infected people do not take precautions or treatments, and instead both spread disease and worsen their own health.

These aren’t the only examples. In Issue 20 Niall McCrae Reviews the Film “The Viral Delusion”, approvingly noting that the film covers “the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health warned of a new plague. However, the existence of the disease and its supposedly causative virus HIV was based on dubious evidence… A vast AIDS industry emerged, abetted by mass media.” The absence of any concern for those who died as a result of the pandemic is palpable. Characterising activism by groups such as ACT UP – who campaigned against Big Pharma and for research into pharmaceutical treatments and access to them rather than the prioritisation of profit – as ‘A vast AIDS industry… abetted by mass media” is gross, dehumanising, and shows an astonishing lack of solidarity.

Why does the paper repeatedly platform these ideas? An article in Issue 9 by long-time HIV/AIDS denier Vernon Coleman provides insight. As we wrote in our article on how The Light promotes homophobia and transphobia, Coleman is infamous for declaring “AIDS the “hoax of the century” in his Sun newspaper column as it would not be of significant risk to heterosexuals” in 1989, the year that over 300,000 people had AIDS and an additional 5-10 million HIV. In Issue 9 of The Light, published in May 2021, Coleman writes “They’ve been trying to introduce the Great Reset for many years… The AIDS scare was probably the first time an infection was used in an attempt to frighten us into obedience.” Again, there’s no compassion or solidarity here – just yet another desperate attempt to deny reality and exploit suffering to draw people into conspiratorial ideas. Of course, given the impact of HIV on gay people particularly, these idea are dependent on forms of homophobia that crop up in other ways in the Light too, with the paper publishing an article referring to Pride month as “a rainbow-festooned festival of the Globohomo Cult” in July 2022’s Issue 23.

Community Solidarity Stroud District stands against all forms of hate. We have friends who witnessed a lot of AIDS-related deaths in the 1980s, we have friends with stable HIV thanks to antiretroviral medication. Falsehoods used to mislead people about the causes of disease, to stigmatise or ‘other’ people based on gender and sexuality hurt everyone. This World AIDS Day we stand with those taking action – like ACT UP activist Andria Mordaunt, whose life partner was diagnosed with HIV in the 80s. She joined both the original die-in in Trafalgar Square in 1989, and the action today. In an article for Dazed magazine explaining why protesters staged a ‘die-in’ she says:

 “We are armed with the tools to fight HIV and to massively slow down and halt further infections but this is being severely hampered by government austerity and cuts, the closure of sexual health clinics and services for people living with HIV…  The idea of replicating the protest in the same location was to send out the message that “it was definitely a nod to the past and a warning about repeating it… Sexual health education for young people is wholly inadequate and there is still, after 40 years, a huge stigma around HIV. We are here today to let this government know we will not sit by and watch this happen.”

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today (20th November) is Transgender Day of Remembrance, created as a memorial to those who have been murdered because of transphobia. We at CSSD stand in solidarity with all of those who have experienced and continue to experience violence and hatred inspired by transphobia.

For more information on remembrance events in the South West:

Bristol – http://tpsw.co.uk/event/transgender-day-of-remembrance-vigil/

Gloucester – https://www.facebook.com/events/s/tdor-vigil/822804588772049

Our articles

All the articles we have published are listed below, from the most recent first:

Our approach

We have been informed that a prominent member of the “Stroud Freedom Group” and “Info Hub” has received personal threats.

We have not seen these threats so we can’t comment on the content. We are aware that The Light “newspaper” contains a great deal of material that many people find offensive, including a defence of a Holocaust denier, platforming of racists, fascist and homophobes, climate change denial, medical misinformation and support for commentators who have threatened NHS workers.

We would like to take this opportunity to state categorically that anonymous personal threats, of any nature, do not form any part of our group’s strategy to call out the far-right propaganda that is carried in The Light.

Our approach is to make public statements to inform and educate people about the nature of the content in The Light and the far-right organisations, individuals and ideas it features or signposts people toward. We also take the same approach when “Stroud Freedom Group” organise events with such individuals. We do not do this to threaten individuals, nor do we seek to censor or cancel people, only to utilise our freedom of speech in the hope others will think carefully about these issues, and – based on an improved understanding – choose to reject The Light.

Open Letter – please withdraw the invitation to James Delingpole to speak in Stroud

The “Stroud Freedom Group” have organised a public meeting in Stroud to be addressed by James Delingpole. In this letter we provide details of Delingpole’s background which explain why we oppose this invitation and encourage people to boycott this event.

Delingpole has a long history not only of denying the science around climate change, but of attacking climate scientists and activists, to the point of repeatedly inciting violence.

In a 2013 column for the Daily Telegraph, Delingpole attacked climatologist and geophysicist Michael E Mann, journalist and climate activist George Monbiot and Australian scientist and environmentalist Tim Flannery. 

The article begins by suggesting climate scientist “Michael Mann be given the electric chair”, “George Monbiot be hanged by the neck”, and “Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles”. Delingpole then tries to excuse himself from making these horrendous suggestions by arguing that “The last thing I would want is for Monbiot, Mann, Flannery, Jones, Hansen and the rest of the Climate rogues’ gallery to be granted the mercy of quick release… Hanging is far too good for such ineffable toerags.” 

Delingpole writes that “it would be nice to think one day that there would be a Climate Nuremberg” and an image from the Nuremberg trials in which Nazis were tried for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” accompanied the piece. The Telegraph’s caption is simply, “Not pictured: Monbiot, Flannery, Mann….”. 

This incitement to violence and suggestion of an equivalence between studying or working to reduce the impacts of climate change and the Nazi genoide is beyond disgusting. However, it is not the only example of Delingpole endorsing hateful rhetoric.

In 2012, Delingpole wrote a feature article in The Australian newspaper in which he quoted an anonymous New South Wales sheep farmer, as saying, “The wind farm business is bloody well near a pedophile [sic] ring. They’re f . . king [sic] our families and knowingly doing so.” 

The Australian Press Council, described this as “highly offensive” and argued that “the level of offensiveness is so high that it outweighs the very strong public interest in freedom of speech”. Rather than accept the adjudication of the Council, Delingpole published a further piece in which he doubled-down, arguing “that the analogy may be somewhat offensive to the paedophile community.” 

The author of this ridiculously provocative and utterly ridiculous comparison does not deserve to be rewarded with an invitation to speak in public by the “Stroud Freedom Group”.

The reasons not to invite Delingpole extend beyond his contrarian views on climate change and appeals to violence. As Hope Not Hate write: “Delingpole describes himself as having been “redpilled” by the pandemic, a process which appears to have involved him embracing increasingly extreme conspiracy theories and their politically extreme proponents. Delingpole’s podcast has hosted unsavoury guests since it launched in 2019, with the fringe “race scientist” Edward Dutton among his earliest guests, but a rising number of guests associated with the traditional far right have appeared on the show in the past year. The most extreme of his recent guests was “Morgoth”, an anonymous blogger and video producer from North Tyneside whose offerings combine pseudo-intellectual conspiracy theories with vicious racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia… Other guests during 2021 included QAnon promoter Charlie Ward, neo-reactionary Ralph Masilimani and the then-Patriotic Alternative member Josh (aka Richard Lionheart).” 

In December 2021, Delingpole recorded an 85-minute video broadcast with Colin Robertson, a white nationalist. Robertson was suspended by YouTube in February 2021, following videos in which he said “violence, by which I mean civil war, is inevitable between us native Europeans and various immigrant groups” (2016) and enthused about “torpedo[ing] boats carrying refugees, describing in detail the “men, women, and children being blown to bits, and drowning in a mutilated form.”

In a 2012 article for The Spectator, Delingpole cites a modernised version of Kulturbolschewismus conspiracy used by Nazis to accuse Jewish intellectuals of degeneracy (translating as “cultural Bolshevism”) to explain the persistence of racism, writing “Much, if not most, of the racial tension we experience today has less to do with natural antipathy than it does with the idiot multiculturalist measures supposedly aimed at preventing it. We don’t talk about these things because cultural Marxism has very deliberately engineered a climate in which we are scared to do so.” The same term was the theme of fascist Anders Breivik’s “manifesto”, written before he killed 77 young social democrats on an island in Norway in 2011.

We imagine that the “Stroud Freedom Group” will try to divert this into a conversation about Delingpole’s “right to free speech”, and away from what he actually has to say. But Delingpole has over the years had plenty of opportunity to air his views all over the ‘mainstream media’, the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, and Spectator as well as on his own podcast and in far-right channels. He has been able to publish books and become the London executive editor of Breitbart London (an arm of the media company known and described by original executive editor Steve Bannon as the “platform of the alt right”). The only question is why anyone in Stroud would feel it necessary to invite him, and other far-right influencers, to speak in our town.

We the undersigned urge all involved in the event to reconsider, and to withdraw the invitation to James Delingpole. If the event goes ahead, we suggest that people do not attend and thereby help pay what we must assume will be Delingpole’s hefty speaking fee. If you want to hear what he has to say, so that you can make your own mind up, he’s all over the internet.

Signed by,

Community Solidarity Stroud District

The following 217 individuals, in alphabetical order by first name:

  1. Adam Horovitz
  2. Adrian Blair
  3. Adrian Manning
  4. Adrian Oldman
  5. Alan Sage
  6. Alena Zavarin
  7. Alexci Swann
  8. Alice Faith Murray
  9. Alice Lovegrove
  10. Alison Widgery
  11. Allan Burns
  12. Amanda Sultan-Black
  13. Andrew Budd
  14. Andy Stayte
  15. Anna Bonallack
  16. Anna Woodford
  17. Anne Mackintosh
  18. Anthony Morris.
  19. Azra Sangster
  20. Barbara Imrie
  21. Bern Wakefield-Heath
  22. Brenda Cox
  23. Bridie March
  24. Carol Mathews
  25. Carole Oosthuysen
  26. Caroline Harmer
  27. Caroline Molloy
  28. Caroline Motzfeldt
  29. Catriona Bracker
  30. Charles Brimacombe
  31. Charles Wallis
  32. Chloe Turner
  33. Chris Fry
  34. Chris Pickard
  35. Chris Stockwell
  36. Christine Lee
  37. Christopher Hey
  38. Christopher Jockel
  39. Ciaran Whittall
  40. Cllr Doina Cornell
  41. Cllr Kate Crews
  42. Cllr Steve Hynd
  43. Connie Tongue
  44. Darina Cooper
  45. Denise Donnelly
  46. Denise Needleman
  47. Derek Ryden
  48. Dominic Thomas
  49. Dominique Lee
  50. Dotty Cooper
  51. Dr Natasha Wilson
  52. Elaine Weaving
  53. Elinor Croxall
  54. Elizabeth Holland
  55. Elizabeth Lee
  56. Elle Zwandahl
  57. Ellie Stafford
  58. Emily Finch
  59. Emily Walsh
  60. Emily Weaver
  61. Emma Calcutt
  62. Emma Riches
  63. Emma Seabrook
  64. Esther Carter
  65. Eva Goddard
  66. Eva Ward
  67. Fiona Ellis
  68. Fiona Stuart
  69. Fran Kellett
  70. Fran Mosley
  71. Francis Barton
  72. Francis Gobey
  73. Frank Milum-Palmer
  74. Gareth Kitchen
  75. Gareth Strachan
  76. Gareth Walsh
  77. Gareth Zimmerman BA, BEd, MEd
  78. Gavin McClafferty
  79. Gemma Sangwine
  80. Georgia Owen
  81. Georgie Strachan
  82. Hannah Boss
  83. Hanya Paradine
  84. Hebba Zedan
  85. Helen Elliott-Boult
  86. Helen Fenton
  87. Helen Hart
  88. Hilary Burgess
  89. Ione Mako
  90. Isa Clee
  91. J Nelson
  92. Jackie John
  93. Jagdish Patel
  94. James Beecher
  95. Jamie O’Dell
  96. Jamie Vans
  97. Jamila Gavin
  98. Jane Bates
  99. Jasmine Ghandour
  100. Jason Conway
  101. Jeff Gillett
  102. Jen Hoskins
  103. Jennifer Horsfall
  104. Jenny Kempson
  105. Jenny Rose
  106. Jeremy Green
  107. Jessica Cantoni
  108. Jessica Paradine
  109. Jodi Waldron
  110. Jodie Calcutt
  111. John Walmsley
  112. Jolyon Buckle
  113. Jon Wyatt
  114. Jonathan Holmes
  115. Josie Cowgill
  116. Jude Emmet
  117. Jude Smith
  118. Jude Stockwell
  119. Julia Berg
  120. Julie Cigman
  121. Jyoti Felce
  122. Karen Doe
  123. Kat Parker
  124. Kate Harrison
  125. Katherine Fey
  126. Kathryn Buckingham
  127. Kathy Trevelyan
  128. Kaye Welfare
  129. Kiera Jones
  130. Lara Pohl-Martell
  131. Laura Cullimore
  132. Laura Hazelchild
  133. Laurie Davies
  134. Les Jevins
  135. Lily Nicol
  136. Linda Chance
  137. Lisa Taylor
  138. Liz Cowan
  139. Liz Gibson
  140. Liz Terry
  141. Liz Whiteside
  142. Lorelai Prosser
  143. Lucia Jayaseelan
  144. Lucy Felce
  145. Lucy Garrett
  146. Luke Inder
  147. Lynn Haanen
  148. Malcolm Eva
  149. Marina Marvan
  150. Mark Hewlett
  151. Mark Stevens
  152. Mark Treacher
  153. Martin Stockwell
  154. Martin Whiteside – Green Party member
  155. Mary Inder
  156. Mathilde Louden
  157. Matilda Mathews Weir
  158. Megan Sheer
  159. Michael Reeks
  160. Michelle Chatham
  161. Mike McCarthy
  162. Miranda Pole
  163. Nabeela Akhtar
  164. Natalie Steffen
  165. Nell Benney
  166. Nick Mills
  167. Nick Weir
  168. Nicola Hill
  169. Nils Agger
  170. Nimue Brown
  171. Norah Kennedy
  172. Norman Kay
  173. Oisin Hayden Burrell
  174. Oliver Holmes
  175. Pam Shepherd
  176. Pammy Michell
  177. Pat Valentine
  178. Patricia Kattenhorn
  179. Paul Eagles
  180. Paul McKee
  181. Paul Roberts
  182. Paul Shevlin
  183. Paul Southcott
  184. Peter Seccombe
  185. Polly Stratton
  186. Prof Laurence Cox
  187. Rebecca Chambers
  188. Richard Erskine
  189. Rob Brookes
  190. Robert Hilliard
  191. Robin Collins
  192. Robin Drury-Layfield
  193. Rod Nelson B.Arch, ABHA, ARE
  194. Roger Plenty
  195. Rosalind Coombes
  196. Rose Harwood
  197. Roseanne Steffen
  198. Rosie Thresher
  199. Rosie Wingate
  200. Rowan Schofield
  201. Roy Widgery
  202. Sally Birch
  203. Sally Brooks
  204. Sally Pickering
  205. Sam Gowing
  206. Sarah C Jones
  207. Sarah Dixon
  208. Sasha Josette
  209. Shani Wills
  210. Sharon Baker
  211. Simon Jacobson
  212. Sophie Guthrie
  213. Stephen Lydon
  214. Steve Hunter
  215. Steven Naumann
  216. Steven Palmer
  217. Sue Oppenheimer
  218. Susan Roberts
  219. Susan Turner
  220. Tamsin Morris
  221. Tarra Gilder-Rai
  222. Teresa Casey
  223. Thomas Brown
  224. Tina Cowan
  225. Tom Lowrie
  226. Val Saunders
  227. Valerie Randell

Varda Zisman

Letters to the Stroud News and Journal, 12/10/22

The Stroud News and Journal has published two letters regarding The Light this week. Sadly, they haven’t published the reply our member Jeremy Green wrote in response to Richard House’s letter the previous week, but we have included it first on this page.

Richard House’s letter to the SNJ says “If Mr Green would like to respectfully debate these and any other Light-related issues with me in public, he just needs to give me a call.”

As Dr House knows, Community Solidarity Stroud District has offered to have a facilitated discussion with local distributors of The Light, and that we have proposed an expert facilitator for this session. We are awaiting dates from the distributors of The Light.

He also misrepresents as a general refusal to debate our reluctance to discuss the rotundity of the earth.

Yours, Dr Jeremy Green

The letters which follow are not by members of our group, but we report the text and include a photo for interest regardless.

Like Dr. House, I have no means of personally measuring increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or sea level rise, or (with one exception, the Grossglockner Glacier in Austria, which I saw in about 1990, and my stepdaughter saw again just a couple of years ago, much depleted) the rate of melting of glacial ice.It behoves both of us, therefore, to be careful which experts we turn to in order to understand what is going on.

I am currently reading, for the second time, ‘Farewell to Ice’, by Peter Wadhams, and would like to draw this book to the attention of Dr. House and to anyone else interested. It is a very thorough explanation of the nature of ice, a history of the ice ages and the greenhouse effect. It considers the future of Arctic sea ice, the so called ‘death spiral’, the accelerating effects of Arctic feedbacks, the potential for massive methane release as the permafrost melts, the rise in sea levels. It considers events in the Antarctic and the aceleration of glacers there. He does not draw attention to the Thwaites Glacier, which has become a matter of concern since the 2016 publication of this book. He discusses and gives a clear explanation of the Milankovitch cycles (the natural variation of climate caused by regular oscillations in the Earth’s revolution).

He discusses how we know with certainty how temperatures, carbon dioxide and methane have varied over the last 400,000 years. There is a clear demonstration of the alarming increase in all these in the last couple of centuries, and the consequent accelerating rise of sea level and loss of reflective ice. He discusses the way the speed of glaciers has accelerated, many Greenland glaciers flowing twice as fast as a few years ago. Concerning CO2 levels, he says ‘given that levels are already too high for non-disruptive climate change, the fact that they are continuing to accelerate upwards with no let up at all is profoundly distressing.’

What are Peter Wadhams’ qualifications for telling us this? To quote the blurb on his book, he is the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist. He has been Director of the Scott Polar Institute, and Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge. He has made more than fifty epiditions to both polar regions, working from ice camps, icebreakers, aircraft and, uniquely, Royal Navy submarines (making six submerged voyages to the North Pole). He has held visiting professorships in universities in Tokyo and the US, including the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Dr. House appears to have had an academic education. He must know that he cannot, should not, dismiss such study by Wadhams and many other scientists as ‘the simple posivistic “science” underpinning the flaky notion of “climate change”‘, without providing real reason to do so, which would involve study of climate change at at least the same standard as Wadhams’ work. My definition of an expert is someone who knows what they are talking about, and I think that Wadhams meets that definition. I doubt if Dr. House has been under the sea ice any more often than I have. And this lack of understanding throws all other things he advocates into doubt: particularly, of course, vaccination.

So why should I believe Dr. House over Peter Wadhams?”

Roger Plenty

I would like to express my gratitude to the publishers of the Light Newspaper – I believe they perform a valuable public service.

I used to spend hours researching on the internet in order to keep abreast of the latest conspiracy theories of the lunatic fringe.

Now I can find them all, and some I’d never dreamt of, in convenient easy to read and easy to discard publication.

Well done, proof that care in the community does work.

Jim Watson

Protest against ‘The Light’ paper as its editor speaks in Stroud

On Thursday 29th September, we hung a banner from the Merrywalks bridge , reading “No to “The Light” paper – lies, hatred and climate change denial”. We have previously protested against vile antisemitism and Holocaust denial being defended by the paper, as well as highlighting the “promotion of homophobia and transphobia”, and consistent climate denial in The Light – which is regularly handed out for free in Stroud High St (and elsewhere around the district).

The protest was timed to coincide with a meeting organised by the group which hands out The Light paper locally, hosting the editor of the paper – visiting from Manchester.

Community Solidarity Stroud District emphasises that they recognise their opponents’ rights to freedom of assembly and speech, but will continue to use their own rights to free speech and assembly to challenge misinformation and hatred.

Sign our statement at tinyurl.com/TheLightStatement
Learn more at: communitysolidaritystrouddistrict.org

Consistent denial of climate change in The Light

Climate change denial has featured in almost every single issue of The Light. Other than the pandemic, it is probably the most common theme. This article explore this in depth – see our leaflet on the topic for a short summary.

The Light does not discuss the existing harms of extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, or sea-level rise. Instead, it repeatedly asserts that climate change is a “hoax”, a “con”, a “scam”. It argues that claims that there is a climate emergency are part of a conspiracy by a shadowy global elite to extend their control over society and individuals. There is a consistent trashing of climate and environmental activists, and of even the limited and inadequate efforts by governments to limit climate degradation. There is even more scorn for any attempts at international coordination of such efforts, which are fitted into the overall narrative of a secret plan to impose a “world government”.

This might come as a surprise to those who think that The Light is somehow on the side of the “natural world” and against technological civilization, or those in Stroud who remember that The Beacon, the now-closed shop that became the centre of anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown activity in our town, was once the meeting place for Extinction Rebellion activists. Some of the people handing out The Light have in the past campaigned in favour of climate action. It might even surprise some of the people who hand out The Light – quite a few of them don’t seem to know what’s in the paper. It’s notable that The Light’s opposition to “big corporations” doesn’t extend to the fossil fuel industry. And it doesn’t have a bad word to say about the Koch brothers, the billionaires who fund climate change denial and misinformation… and who also fund misinformation about the pandemic. 

We think this is important. The basic science around the “greenhouse effect” and the role of atmosphere Carbon Dioxide and fossil fuels began to be understood as early as Svante Arrhenius’ work in 1896. The “greenhouse effect” is the way in which heat and energy are trapped close to Earth’s surface by particular “greenhouse” gases. The presence of these gases can be thought of as a blanket wrapped around Earth, keeping some heat and energy in – which would otherwise be radiated out into space. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and water vapour. Emissions and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have both risen dramatically during the industrial/capitalist era – leading to heating of the planet. It has been over 30 years since physicist James Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee that “global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” A 2021 review of 88,125 studies published since 2012 “conclude[s] with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change—expressed as a proportion of the total publications—exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature”.

And we know that the impacts of climate breakdown, now and in the future, are uneven. While everyone, everywhere will be affected, the effects are most significant in particular geographic areas, and hit harder where people are less able to adapt. Recent examples include flooding in Bangladesh and Assam in India, severe flooding in Sudan, drought in Chile and in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, landslides in Brazil, wildfire in Argentine wetlands and flooding in the Amazon. Action is urgently needed – causing delay by spreading misinformation or undermining interest in developing solutions is harmful, indeed – arguably – complicity in genocide. This is an issue of justice as well as an environmental issue. The communities on the frontline of fighting climate change are often the same who have resisted centuries of colonialism, chattel enslavement and white supremacy, and who continue to fight against the ecocide of fossil fuel companies.

This is by no means “just one article”. Below we’ve made a list of the climate change disinformation that has appeared in the paper. If you want further information, the issue numbers and page numbers will help you find it. Before the list, a brief comment on rebuttal. We have not included an attempt to rebut the following claims here – we believe the overwhelming majority of people accept that global heating is occurring, is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, other industrial processes, deforestation and other changes to land use; and that a response by human societies is both necessary and urgent. The purpose of our list is only to make clear the depth of The Light’s commitment to disinformation on climate change. For those who may have been swayed by arguments in The Light, or are curious, we recommend the skepticalscience.com website, which debunks climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial in accessible language. Examples include responses to the common arguments that the “Climate’s changed before” “There is no consensus” (both arguments that distributors of The Light locally have made when we have raised this issue with them), “It’s not bad”, or that “Models are unreliable”. Also worth reading for context are a recent article by Italian climate journalist Stella Levantesi for the desmog.com website, which discusses the propaganda strategies of the fossil fuel industry and its allies and their efforts to delay and obstruct climate action. That theme is explored at greater length, with reference to previous examples such as the efforts of tobacco companies to deny well-established scientific knowledge, in the book and film ‘Merchants of Doubt’.

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32 examples of disinformation on climate change / climate denial in The Light from their 23 issues to date (July 2022):                                   

  • Issue 3, page 10: Chart showing “fake” climate change as part of a web of deception
  • Issue 4, page 8: Interview with anti-vaxxer “doctor” Vernon Coleman refers to “the climate change scam”. 
  • Issue 5, page 4: Far right former academic Niall McCrae writes in defence of “climate sceptic” Piers Corbyn
  • Issue 7, page 7: Points out that critic of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists Dr Emily Grossman is a climate activist
  • Issue 8, page 6: Full page article headed “Climate Change Fraud” by long-time climate change denier Tom Tamarkin. 
  • Issue 9, page 4: Article by far right former academic Niall McCrae  and leader of far right political party Robin Tilbrook suggesting police favour climate change protesters compared to the way they treat “patriots and freedom marchers”
  • Issue 10, page 16: Anti-vaxxer “doctor” Vernon Coleman writes of “the global warming pseudoscience –the hoax behind the covid hoax”
  • Issue 11, page 3: Full page article headed “‘Climate Emergency’ driven by faulty models and fake news ” says “the idea of a ‘Climate Emergency’ is a deception”
  • Issue 12, page 14: Attack on renewable energy by “Tyler Durden”, the fictional-character pseudonym of a climate change denial blogger
  • Issue 13, page 16: Article claiming that US wildfires are not driven by climate change, by H Sterling Burnett, a staffer at the right-wing climate change denial promoting think-tank The Heartland Institute…known for its persistent questioning of climate science, for its promotion of ‘experts’ who have done little, if any, peer-reviewed climate research
  • Issue 13, page 18: Anti-vaxxer “doctor” Vernon Coleman writes of “the non-existent problem of climate change”
  • Issue 13, page 24: Ad for Vernon Coleman’s book about “the covid and climate change frauds”
  • Issue 14, pages 6-7: Double page spread questioning the science of climate change by Ian Phillips (Chief Executive, Oil & Gas Innovation Centre)
  • Issue 15, page 15: Article by fundamentalist Christian “Heart Publications” references discredited 2007 Channel Four documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle; Heart Publications promotes climate change denial on its website.
  • Issue 15, page 18: Full page article by “doctor” Vernon Coleman headed “Global warming lies, deceit and hypocrisy”, says “The covid-19 fraud was bad but it is nothing compared to the global warming fraud which is now well underway”
  • Issue 16, page 2: Fascist leader Anne-Marie Waters writes “this time the fear will be created by the ‘climate change crisis’. It is yet another lie.”
  • Issue 16, page 10: Connects Bill Gates conspiracy theory with climate change.
  • Issue 16, page 15: Link promoting the website of antisemite Sandi Adams and her writing on “”The Green New Deal”, “Sustainable Development”, the “climate change” racket”.
  • Issue 17, page 12: “Both covid and the climate change rhetoric use pseudo-scientific claims to appear scientific because it actually does not matter what is real or fake to all those on board.”
  • Issue 18, page 1: Editor Darren Nesbit writes: “You could, for example, create a whole ‘climate crisis’ scenario in which the Earth is dying due to certain types of behaviour, and through your world organisations, multinational corporations, owned and operated national governments and media,badger people into believing living an advanced, industrialised life is a terrible thing and we should all go back to poverty.”
  • Issue 18, page 3: Article by “Mark Moneycircus” locates concern about climate change in the context of The Great Reset, part of The Light’s uber-conspiracy
  • Issue 18, page 13: Article criticising the Archbishop of Canterbury for supporting vaccination refers to his calls for action on climate change as “bizarre”
  • Issue 18, page 20: “Doctor” Vernon Coleman says that the covid hoax was invented because the “climate change…myth” wasn’t working fast enough
  • Issue 19, page 22: Vernon Coleman says “The climate change hoax that was planned back in the 1960s is the really big threat we are facing. Covid-19 was the warm up act for the big one – the global warming fraud.”
  • Issue 20, page 22: Vernon Coleman says “Why does the BBC now ban any honest, open discussion about vaccines or climate change, when the science proves beyond doubt that the covid jabs are unsafe and ineffective and that climate change doesn’t exist?”
  • Issue 21, page 4: Article by crank scientist J Marvin Hendon saying that IPCC’s failure to investigate “chemtrails” calls into question its findings and in its moral authority. 
  • Issue 21, page 7: Article in support of climate change denier Piers Corbyn, which refers to XR and Just Stop Oil as “controlled opposition groups” that are part of a strategy by the government to “sour public opinion and ripen them up to support more draconian laws”. 
  • Issue 21, page 12: Article about the covid and climate deceptions which says “covid-19 and man=made climate change are psy-ops”
  • Issue 21, page 18: Niall McCrae says “Climate crisis actors will stop at nothing to make life hard and disorderly.”
  • Issue 21, page 19: Editor Darren Smith refers to climate change as “a vague and unproven ideology”
  • Issue 22, frontpage: Editor Darren smith says “a fake climate crisis means we have to source the most expensive ways of generating power” under the headline “Are we all being brainwashed?”
  • Issue 23, page 6: In an article advertised in a banner on the front page as “exposing the man-made climate change fraud”, Daniel Thompson-Mills describes climate change as a “massive fraud” and “diversion” – claims “the notion of man-made climate change… is not actually supported by the data and evidence”. The article presents no evidence, instead referring only to the long-discredited “climategate” email controversy – into which eight committees have investigated and found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.

Our leaflet summarising the article above:

Our leaflet summarising this article

Below is an image showing the headline from one example of the content listed above.

Dr. Coleman's Column - The Light - the paper by the people for the people "Global warming lies deceit and hypocrisy"
Article by “Dr” Vernon Coleman entitled “Global warming lies, deceit and hypocrisy” from Issue 15, in which he bizarrely claims “There is not one jot of real scientific evidence for the myth of man-made climate change” and concludes by writing “Global warming enthusiasts are a danger to you and your family’s health and future and a danger to mankind as a whole. Some are moronic, some mentally ill and some are evil”. As we discuss in a previous piece, Coleman has repeatedly downplayed HIV / AIDS and even suggests AIDS doesn’t exist, despite the disease having killed an estimated 37 million people.