Why has an anti-vax newspaper started promoting the far-right?
Antisemitic conspiracy theories meet alternative medicine
Welcome to Scout, and thanks for signing up at the end of our first week. Today we’re publishing an investigation into an anti-vaccine newspaper that has joined forces with some of the most notorious names in the British far-right. The Light newspaper –which gets handed out at most anti-vax protests – has been promoting an activist group run by a self-described “Nazi sympathiser”.
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The ‘truthpaper’
If you happened to pass an anti-vaccine protest in the last year, you might have seen activists handing out a free newspaper called The Light. It’s a must-read for any anti-vaxxer, and groups across the country volunteer to hand it out. You might have seen it from that viral video of Piers Corbyn protesting mask mandates on the London Underground. The Light’s masthead declares itself a “truthpaper”, publishing the news about Covid the government doesn’t want you to know. It comes out every month and has a print run of at least 200,000. That’s more readers than Vogue, GQ, and Vanity Fair, monthly magazines owned by the publishing giant Condé Nast.
The editor is Darren Nesbit, a musician from Manchester perhaps best known for telling ITV’s Philip Schofield the earth is flat. Judging by the adverts The Light carries, its audience is a broad church of alternative medicine types. These are the sort of people who buy clothing resistant to electrical signals, books by psychic mediums who say they can communicate with the dead, and healing chambers that claim to use technology from alien civilisations. Until recently, The Light ran articles about how the pandemic isn't real, how Covid vaccines are poisonous, and the importance of vitamin B12.
So it is surprising to see that the newspaper has made room for an unexpected type of reader in the last few months. The Light has started publishing some of the most vicious figures in the far-right, and pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories among their fans on social media.
It is emblematic of the wider trend that has seen far-right extremism spread among anti-vax groups during the pandemic, both seeing sinister reasons behind the government’s handling of Covid. They believe in the “plandemic” conspiracy theory that vaccines are secretly filled with toxic chemicals and are a depopulation measure to control society.
Teaming up with Anne Marie Waters
Before the pandemic, it would have been hard to imagine two groups less likely to get along. It’s especially odd because the anti-vax world seems to have a left-wing flavour. The Light’s website displays a proud endorsement from the conspiracy theorist Piers Corbyn, older brother of Jeremy. “Best damn paper I've ever read,” he says.
Which made it strange to see The Light positively profile Anne Marie Waters, head of For Britain, a far-right party that once put up for election a man who belonged to National Action, the banned terrorist group that plotted to murder an MP. Waters first appeared in the pages of The Light this May when she was interviewed by Nesbit, who uses the pen name of Darren Smith. He introduced his Q&A with Waters by saying her party had been unfairly maligned, adding she “wants to preserve its country’s traditions, borders, ancient values and free way of life”.
In her interview, Waters said: “I want a Britain of free people who are governed with common sense and respect for the truth.” She went on: “We want to bring back British culture and values and insist that these be preserved. We will work in the interests of the people of Britain.” In October, Waters wrote her own piece in The Light about vaccines, railing against the government “brainwashing” children and injecting them with “a new and potentially dangerous substance”.
This is a watered-down version of her usual pitch. Waters is in fact a counter-jihadist who believes the West is existentially threatened by Islam. She has called the religion "evil" and "a killing machine" and has spoken about wanting to “reduce the birthrates” of Muslims. She founded a UK offshoot of Pegida, the European anti-Islam protest movement, with the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson). It has since fizzled out.
Waters has spoken on alt-right radio about the “Islamization” of Europe. "The idea that these fuckers can just come along and take it all," Waters has said. "Stop all Muslim immigration now.” A stint in Ukip ended when her own party’s peers thought she was too radical for them. Nigel Farage, that well known advocate of inclusivity, called her a “racist” who has “such extreme views on the religion of Islam”.
It’s not just Waters who has appeared in The Light. The works of David Icke, the conspiracy theorist whose books question “the official version of the Holocaust”, are regularly advertised in the paper. The May issue also published an article by Robin Tilbrook. He is the founder of a party called the English Democrats, which invited old BNP supporters to join under the belief that it would, in his owns words, make it an ‘electorally credible party”.
And the most recent edition ran an article by Pat Buchanan. The American political operative and culture warrior – best known for his 1992 speech at the Republican National Convention, when he said there was a battle being fought for the “soul of America” – was published in the November issue.
Buchanan has promoted Holocaust revisionism, claiming that Treblinka was not a death camp and that its gas chambers would have been insufficient to kill the estimated 900,000 Jews who died there. “Buchanan repeatedly demonises Jews and minorities and openly affiliates with white supremacists,” says the Anti-Defamation League. Aged 83, he is now a blogger. The Light ran Buchanan’s piece on the “New World Order”, which features the antisemitic mural of Jewish bankers controlling the planet that Jeremy Corbyn once praised.
When contacted by Scout, Buchanan said he wasn’t aware of The Light, which suggests the newspaper’s editors are such fans of his work they copied one of his blog posts and pasted it into their newspaper.
It’s often said that conspiracy theories thrive in times of uncertainty and distrust. The government’s response to Covid has been catastrophically inept, and there are good reasons to feel uncertain and distrustful upon hearing about Christmas parties held in Downing Street and lucrative procurement deals given to the friends of Tory ministers. But it would have taken some imagination to predict that someone like Waters would have found common ground with anti-vaxxers like Nesbit.
How has this crossover happened? Social media certainly makes it easy for ideas from one group to cross-pollinate to another. The writer George Monbiot also suggests that the far-right and the anti-vaxxers share the idea of “the sovereign body”. One group sees it as a nation that should be “untainted” by non-white immigrants, another group sees it as a system that should be free from “chemicals”. Hence why some anti-vaxxers call themselves “pure-bloods”, a reference to Harry Potter characters who do not have non-wizard lineage. Does this mean that the far-right will benefit from new believers? After reading The Light and its social media groups, it certainly seems that way.
‘The kike spike’
Antisemitic conspiracy theories appear on The Light’s official channels on Telegram, the secure messaging app. There, Nesbit and his team share Covid news items and organise the distribution of their paper. Scout has been monitoring these channels, and we have observed The Light’s administrators promoting far-right groups and sharing antisemitic material.
Nesbit himself has shared the antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Rothschild banking family is in control of global affairs, managing “puppet” political figures and being a “close friend of the rogue state of Israel”. The claim that the Rothschilds are in charge of the world is an old conspiracy theory which can be traced back to the mid-19th century when a French pamphlet compared them to leeches.
In The Light’s official Telegram groups, their supporters talk about fake news about Covid appearing in “kike rags” and call vaccines “the kike spike” or “the Jew goo”. Unrelated to the pandemic, there are also posts from the newspaper’sx fans claiming Israel is deliberately “pushing Third World people into Europe” and recommendations for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th century hoax that says Jews seek world domination.
The admins of The Light’s official Telegram channels have shared posts about Covid from Tommy Robinson’s page. They have also shared adverts for Patriotic Alternative, the far-right activist group run by Mark Collett, a man who describes himself as a “Nazi sympathiser” and recommends Mein Kampf. One message that an admin for The Light posted to their distribution group – which contains more than 8,500 people – fumed about migrant crossings in the Channel. “Every new immigrant is another potential vote against the interests of the indigenous people of these lands,” it said, including details on how to join Patriotic Alternative. Senior figures in Patriotic Alternative regularly advertise their group’s events in The Light’s channels, suggesting they find the anti-vaxxers worthy recruitment material.
Nesbit described his team at The Light as “champions of free speech and open debate”. But when we contacted him for comment, he hinted at legal action against Scout if we tried to portray him as “jew haters etc”. He accused us of being “on the wrong side of history” and said: “You are scrabbling in the dark.”
He emailed over a lengthy statement. In part, it said: “Those who still think in terms of left and right miss the whole charade of two party politics, and the set-up of a great public divide over a very narrow Overton window. The bankers own all the major parties, all public discourse and all mass messaging.
“Anything that goes against the mainstream corporate narrative, when hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake, is labelled as a 'conspiracy theory', in order to shut down debate and curiosity from those who may feel something isn't quite right with the stories they are being told.
“In a blatant bit of Orwellian thought control through language manipulation, all 'conspiracy theories' are now automatically labelled 'far right conspiracy theories' or 'right wing extremist' - terms repeatedly used in the corporate media as pejoratives for those who question the morals of the military-technological-corporate-government complex, which makes perfect sense when you realise the same group of people own all of the media too.”
well at least you printed our response at the end.
what i want to know is, what exactly are you so afraid of? unless you don't pay any attention to what we actually say and write, and simply go off your own thoughts instead.
Thank you for letting me know that there is a Far Right Group in Britain. I'm from the USA though I was born in Dublin after Conception in Liverpool. If I contact this Far Right Group that you say they say are Self-Descriptive Sympathizers then if I make them aware that Eva Braun lives in the USA with the Self-Descriptive Name, Jane Tomczak of El Cajon, while she claims to be from England and Speaks with a Haughty Synthetic Upper Class Accent, will this Group become Celebratory Enough to Perhaps Publish her Image so that Your Group will become Alarmed Enough to Actually Say Something About Eva Braun's Continued Existence with Impunity while the CIA and the FBI whistle aimless trying to convince the World that they don't know anything because of course if Russia learns that the USA is Harboring Eva Braun when Russia lost at least about 20 Million in The Second World War then that might Derail Joseph Biden's Hand Waving Quest to Stop the Russian Invasion of the Ukraine which Russia needs to Proceed with if Russia wants to have a Chance to Invade Europe before China Invades Europe given China is still bitterly simmering over the Fact that European Countries occupied their Cities after forcing themselves upon the Chinese wherein European Sections of Chinese Cities were Established wherein Chinese were NOT Allowed. Thereafter a Horrible War transpired between China and Japan after having Co-Existed in Peace for Prolonged Centuries before the Europeans showed up to Upset the Balance of the Peace between these Two Sister Cultures. Since the Huns had their Day, and having Hundreds might have helped the Huns; We should all Sit Back with Wonder at what the Count Difference between the Population of the Huns and the Population of the China might be. Now just because Eva Braun is Alive doesn't mean she would continue with the Nazi Cult. That was Made for Germany in the Early Twentieth Century. What Sort of Cult they have Dreamed Up for the Next Round isn't Something I know though I was raised by the Irish Mafia Family to which Eva Braun is Married to through Her Husband, and they have a Child Together who is Hibbard Leary by his Father and Murphy by his Mother. What I'm saying is that you might actually read the Nazi Sympathizer Publication though you could just look at Twitter Account @MahdiCain to see Eva Braun as she looks in Modern History by which I mean within the Last Decade to Understand with Your Eyes that Leadership of the Nazi Cult had Absolutely No Legitimate Reason to Kill Themselves. They Won their War to Steal Wealth from the Millions they Killed. It's like Gardening. You work on it for a while, and then sometimes you have to leave your Plot of Land until Conditions are Favorable Again. Later you return as Conditions Improve and at that point you do Everything you can to have a Grand Harvest. Of course this means you are building upon the Foundation you established in Round One. That's Exactly what they have been up to. So let me start writing to Nazi Sympathizers to see if they will happily recognize Jane Tomczak is Eva Braun because the Groups who are Self-Described Nazi Opponents won't do anything to use their Eyes to Look and See that Eva Braun lives in Excellent Health. Seeing Her Husband might be One of the Reasons she's So Very Healthy. You know what they say, when a Woman's Partner dies sometimes they give up the Ghost by Way of the Deep Depression caused by Grief and Anguish. Of course when the Nazi Sympathizer Group learns that My Goal is to See Someone with Brains and Balls Arrest Eva Braun, her Husband, their Child, and the Whole Enclosing Mafia Cult then they might try to Kill Me by Running Me Over with a Truck with Extra Large Wheels. If instead, I Continue my Focus on Self-Described Hebrew Sympathetic Groups, I might be Murdered by Continued Indifference to make My Existence Invisible as the Hebrew Groups Continue to Cleave to a False World War Two Narrative whose Purpose is to Protect False Adam Adolf and False Eve Eva from Detection. Will I have better luck being Truck Murdered? What are the Odds a Pair of Eyeballs can be Found? Too Busy watching Porn?
— @MahdiCain