Blinded by The Light (newspaper)

As with many countries in the Western world, the UK has seen a rise of ethno-nationalist politics in recent years. One politician who led the Brexit agenda to leave the EU, is Nigel Farage. Not being able to blame the Eurocrats anymore, the lie took hold that Britain’s ills could be blamed on poor immigrants rather than greedy elites. Recently, Farage has come under fire for his alleged expressions of antisemitism. Although that focused on his childhood, his appearances on the podcast of alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was also discussed. During an appearance, Farage claimed that ‘globalists’ are trying to override national sovereignty by creating one world government. Some critics have claimed that it was ‘dogwhistling’ about threats from Jewish elites. The concern arises because Jones and Farage claim there are evil cabals of people, rather than members of a transnational capitalist class, who are serving the extractive demands of international capital. They don’t discuss capitalism in an intelligent way, because then they would be criticising their friends, funders, and the system that has promoted their views to huge audiences. Discussions in the mass media about who ‘globalists’ are and whether we should be concerned about them (and the structures of capital they serve) could be welcomed, if those discussions go beyond the lazy and nasty tropes of antisemitism. Unfortunately, such discussions seem difficult to have in the UK and elsewhere, as political discussion is often febrile and superficial. I was reminded of that recently in the town of Stroud, where one independent newspaper seems to have generated new debates and fractures between people who previously worked together for social change. In this essay, I want to share what I noticed from reading that newspaper and from experiencing the community fractures that emerge around its arguments. If the mass media weren’t so badly misinforming people in order to protect elites, perhaps this situation would not be so difficult. But in such a poor information system, there is work to get people talking about what can be done together at community level as life gets increasingly difficult for so many.  

Every year I return to the UK to see family. I try to make my carbon count, by meeting people involved in social change, and sometimes giving a public lecture. This year, I agreed to speak in the country town of Stroud (both the transcript and video are available). The event celebrated initiatives to revive commonly-owned property. That’s where neither state, corporations, nor private individuals control assets, but collectives of people — who contribute to the maintenance of those assets. It’s what we need more of as the big systems falter. I spoke to encourage a more mainstream way of talking about the importance of citizen ownership and connecting that to current affairs. Some in the audience didn’t hear that, instead objecting to some of my phrasing. Subsequent dialogue helped me to understand why some people were not open to what I was saying. I decided to write up the experience, as I think this little storm in Stroud has implications for political dialogue in other places – and probably where you live too. 

At the end of my speech a couple of people walked out in protest. Subsequently, I learned that they had been critiquing some neighbours, who have been expressing views which they perceive as socially divisive, pointlessly paranoid, and fascist-adjacent. In some cases these are former friends, and people who once campaigned together for the environment. I regard that fracturing amongst former allies as part of a wider crumbling of the ‘cultural cement’ of societies, discussed in Breaking Together. In that book I pointed to evidence that fractious identity politics is being promoted by elites to prevent us from uniting to resist further exploitation by transnational capitalists or building alternatives in our communities. 

Leaving Stroud on the train, I flipped through The Light newspaper, which had been given to me on the street, by someone I knew from their past in climate activism. At first glance, the focus on personal sovereignty and critiquing power seemed refreshing. However, reading more closely, I noticed some problematic framings. On various issues, it encouraged readers to feel anger at evil cabals, rather than organise together against exploitation by transnational corporations. That parallels much of the opportunist media that channels dissent into political dead ends. The boom in such media over the last 5 years was due to the awful response of the establishment, and mainstream media, to Covid-19. 

If you’ve read my essays on Covid-19 over the last 4 years, you will know I criticised the basis, utility, and ethics of the orthodox response. It was as if the pharmaceutical multinationals had scripted the policy response to maximise their profits. Before the pandemic, there had been no scientific consensus that social distancing, lockdowns, and vaccines untested for long-term effects, would all be smart responses. Even surgical masks had not been a recommended intervention before the pandemic, due to doubts about the significance of their effect. There was good evidence that other interventions could have helped, such as air filters for enclosed public spaces, worker rights to self-declare illness and avoid spreading infections at work or during commuting, plus the targeting of nutritional support including Vitamin D for people of colour. The state-backed demonisation of people who disagreed with government policy was shocking to witness. And it was frightening that so many people were conned into feeling that contrarian views were selfish and reckless. 

In 2020, the first critics of the Covid-19 orthodoxy included prominent epidemiologists and vaccinologists, wellness experts, and ecologists. However, by mid 2021, we began to see both opportunists and right wing media take up the cause, and build their followings. The mainstream media were happy to frame any opposition to the Covid-19 orthodoxy as a far right agenda. During this period The Light newspaper was born. It shared important critiques of Covid-19 policies, as well as some exaggerations and speculative conspiracies. Given the absence of decent discussion in mainstream media, attention grew rapidly, along with that for similar publishers. 

My witnessing of the hijack of a new medical freedom movement by opportunists and right wing media was one reason why, in 2021, as a left wing environmentalist, I began to speak out against the Covid-19 orthodoxy. I knew I’d be vilified, but felt it necessary to demonstrate that not every environmentalist commentator was authoritarian. The various responses I’ve promoted previously are still ones I think should be implemented. I believe they would be by any society that was managed for the health of its citizens with the best available knowledge and technology (rather than for lazy profits). 

Unfortunately, the opportunist media and right wing media have channelled sceptics of the Covid-19 orthodoxy into ideas which undermine true opposition to transnational capitalist exploitation, of which the pharma-scripted orthodoxy on Covid-19 was merely one instance. Reading my copy of The Light newspaper on the train offered me a clear reminder of this process. 

Misguiding the rebellious 

As I flipped through the pages, there were many issues arising, but I will focus on four things that illustrate the concern. 

First, there were articles on the proposed Digital ID systems in the UK. Many people are deeply concerned about privacy and surveillance, so The Light is not alone in raising the alarm. However, a serious discussion of this issue, along with the forever-delayed Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), would consider how British people are already subject to a private corporate system of Digital IDs, which already provide the capability for repression. For instance, six companies must authorise any electronic payment we make. Additionally, most of us rely on Google (gmail) and a phone company (for 2 factor authentication) for giving us ‘de facto’ Digital IDs. Anyone concerned about our personal sovereignty should be deeply concerned about our vulnerability to being cut off from basic services at the whim of distant corporate executives – or because politicians of another country decide that. If not, they do not really care about the issue. The international finance sector wants critics to focus on potential government overreach rather than how to regulate US Bigtech firms that are already determining the access by people around the world to online services, while also operating ‘technofeudal’ systems of trade. Therefore, articles in The Light and elsewhere that pretend everything is fine with this existing Bigtech tyranny, are distracting us from a coherent agenda for reclaiming our digital rights.

Second, many of the articles in The Light made dismissive statements about climate change. As the editors of The Light can imagine that just because there are big companies profiting from disease, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any disease, so they could imagine that just because there are big companies profiting from climate change, that doesn’t mean there isn’t climate change. Just as corporations capture medical policies, they capture climate policies, and that doesn’t make either health or the climate any less urgent for us to address. It makes it more so. Therefore, the leaps from critiquing policies on Net Zero to claiming a conspiracy against the people, or that there isn’t any climate change, or that the pace isn’t disruptive and hazardous, or that CO2 is not a contributing factor, are not credible. The limitations of mainstream climate science and policy are a reason for efforts to shape the agenda, not reject it entirely. Therefore, on climate, The Light appears to be either propaganda or entertainment for a certain demographic. In taking that editorial line, it reflects the general anti-climate stance of nearly all the Covid-skeptic media. That’s an outcome which confirms how counterproductive it was for environmental commentators and organisations to be so authoritarian, or silent about their concerns with the Covid-19 policy agenda. 

Third, the articles in The Light often allude to elite cabals, rather than systems of capital accumulation, for being at fault for the assault on personal sovereignty which The Light editors claim to be deeply concerned about. By not discussing systems of capital accumulation, it means that its readers are not encouraged to explore either strategic resistance or building alternatives. Instead, the implication is we need to just get rid of a few bad actors and bad companies, and then salvation awaits. This undermines the chance for people to move from their awakening about pharmaceutical firms’ influence over policy, or armaments firms’ influence over policy, or financial firms’ influence over policy, to a coherent critique and plan. Worse, it provides a context for scapegoating individuals and potentially even specific ethnic groups. 

That brings me to a fourth issue worth mentioning about The Light Newspaper. One article linked to a website that had a piece on it that not only claims there wasn’t a largescale holocaust in WW2 but contains many antisemitic tropes, such as Jewish people liking to sponge off of others and that they run a global deep state. The article includes the line: “the ever present Deep State, that notorious Jewish succubus which sucks the life out of all states and all people.” I had to look that up. A succubus is a female demonic entity from medieval folklore that appears in a male’s dreams to seduce him through sexual activity. I am sure you would agree that is a despicable piece of writing. I wonder who can’t feel foolish, at the very least, for promoting links to content like that. 

Instead of such nonsensical propositions, we live in a world with multiple powerful networks that are of varying ethnicities and where ethnicity is not the issue but, rather, the way the networks serve different factions of capital and an overarching logic of capital accumulation. I have been comfortable describing them together as a ‘transnational capitalist class’, where the colloquial term used by some for individuals within that is ‘globalist’, as they tend to believe in more global top down influence and control. However, with the way The Light makes the processes seem conspiratorial, rather than systemic, and aimed at agendas other than capital accumulation, with links to websites that are anti-semitic, it is helping to undermine civil discourse on the nature of global power and how to engage the general public on that. It’s exactly the same tactics of Alex Jones and Nigel Farage, when they speak of globalists as evil cabals, rather than a transnational capitalist class. 

That’s why some people objected to my speech in Stroud. They heard my critiques of transnational capitalists as adjacent to conspiracies of the far right. They heard my critique of foreign acquisition of UK property, as if involving anti-foreigner sentiment. And they heard my critique of international banking, as preparing the grounds for antisemitism. In their concern and annoyance with The Light newspaper, they appeared to be as blinded by The Light as those who agree with the paper. Because I did not realise this context in Stroud, when concerns were raised, I was not conciliatory. I was blinded by my own surprise and hurt at them not addressing the issues and potentially smearing my talk. Instead, I could have named antisemitism as both deeply wrong and nothing to do with my analysis. I had thought that stating my analysis and arguments were not about race would have been enough – but I have learned to be more explicit in future.

Globalists aren’t threatened by The Light 

Through action and reaction, as I’ve described above, it appears The Light is doing the bidding of the transnational capitalist class which it might want to resist, if it were ever to name its opposition in a more coherent way. The same goes for the rest of the opportunist right wing media that hijacked the medical freedom movement. Why are they doing that? Is it purely for a lack of education on the exploitative nature of international capital accumulation and of state capture? Maybe. Or perhaps some of the people amplifying these commentators via social media, are deliberately misdirecting the people radicalised by the damaging orthodoxy on Covid-19.  That is, directing them towards a network and story that provides no opposition to global corporatocracy, while also dividing communities that might otherwise develop such an opposition. 

I dwelt on this experience, and chose to share it with you here, as I believe what has been happening in Stroud is a microcosm of the division between people who might otherwise be allies in both resisting global capital accumulation and developing local resilience. 

Some of the world’s oligarchs are supporting this process. We see it most clearly in the actions of billionaire Elon Musk. He backs ethno-nationalists in the UK, such as Tommy Robinson, to promote false enemies to the functioning of British society. According to the billionaires, we aren’t having a tougher time because of the elite control of markets or the overbearing power of multinationals. No, it’s the fault of poor brown people. It was a revulsion with that nasty politics which led some in Stroud to feel awkward when hearing my critique of foreign ownership. That is another example of the decline of nuance in a political climate that’s been made febrile — to divide and rule. 

Finding a real source of change

After I left the UK to return to my home in Indonesia, I was left with the painful question. It is one that arises from recognising the middle-aged middle classes in Western countries have played an outsized role in environmental and social justice movements in the recent past. I wondered: will they be suffering enough, economically, to avoid posturing around novel tribal allegiances, and instead start working on ways of mainstreaming mutual aid and collective resistance to transnational capital? Or will their privilege, from being born in a generation whose chances in life weren’t wrecked by neoliberalism and house-price inflation, insulate them from engaging and supporting the younger generations? In Stroud, I witnessed the attention given to placating the people ‘acting up’ from their place of privilege and neo-tribalism. On the one hand, I was impressed by that care from leaders in the community. On the other hand, I wondered if that could drag down any social movements emerging from such situations. 

The answer may lie in asking people to ‘get over themselves’ and join in something real. In Stroud itself, initiatives like the Stroud Commons, the Lifehouse Initiative, Humanity Project, Transition Towns, might all be useful for local action towards resilience in the face of societal disruption and decline. In other parts of the world there are many similar initiatives — we can find out about them via networks like shareable.net. Sometimes, we only find out about them by trying to start something ourselves and discovering likeminds.  

However, for any local initiatives to avoid becoming another well-meaning side show, we need a political story that can be heard by the general public, not just niche enthusiasts. I thought the most powerful thing said at the Festival of Commoning was by the final comedian in the evening. 

“Are you all into commoning? Can you still get arrested for that, down the park? 

When I was asked to do this gig, I wondered what I was getting myself into.

But you seem a bit grey haired to go around, um, “commoning”, don’t you?” 

His funny comments point to how we ‘do gooders’ can have specialist terminology, gatherings, and preoccupations, that keep us apart from the mainstream political conversations and movements. That was why I gave my speech. I proposed we speak of a ‘citizen ownership agenda’ and explain the spectrum of tactics used against that by transnational capital – from ‘Gateshead to Gaza’. Only if politically active citizens try to direct concerns for national sovereignty towards the real threats to it that come from a transnational capitalist class, will there be a chance for winning power rather than whining about why we lost. 

With that in mind, I recommend watching the talk.