The Light is a monthly conspiracy theory magazine that focuses primarily on COVID-19 and climate change denial, and has also promoted antisemitism and far-right politics. It has also co-organised music festivals and other offline events. 

The Light emerged in September 2020 in tandem with the UK’s burgeoning anti-vaccine protest movement. Edited by the flat-earther Darren Nesbitt, it is designed to mimic a traditional newspaper and has grown into a significant voice in the conspiracy theorist alternative media. Every month, thousands of copies are handed out on street stalls or left alongside mainstream publications in newsagents to be taken free of charge. 

In January 2022, Nesbitt claimed the magazine had a huge 250,000 print run – bigger than some national newspapers – to be distributed by volunteers organised on Facebook and Telegram. The fortunes of the outlet have dipped since, with Nesbitt blaming the loss of “hundreds of subscribers” on the cost-of-living crisis. Interest in The Light has also likely waned as public anxiety about the pandemic has lessened. 

Nonetheless, The Light continues to find a wide reach across the UK and has broadened its focus from pandemic theories to a wider “anti-woke” outlook, taking aim at an “insane woke collectivist ideology” and incorporating strong anti-trans prejudice into its output. 

Notably, the outlet has also platformed and promoted some of the UK’s best-known far-right figures and antisemites, introducing them to new audiences. This includes the Holocaust denier John Hamer, who began writing for The Light in 2021 and, as of June 2024, publishes his historical ramblings via a monthly column. This follows an interview in the May issue in which he claimed the Rothschild family was behind both world wars and that “Judea declared war on Germany in the early 1930s”, a common narrative among neo-Nazis.

Other contributors include anti-Muslim figures such as Anne Marie Waters, Katie Hopkins, David Kurten and the longstanding far-right activist Robin Tilbrook. Among The Light’s most regular writers is Niall McCrae, a disgraced former academic with links to Patriotic Alternative, the neo-Nazi group. 

The tone of The Light is highly alarmist and occasionally violent. For example, an article in the June 2022 issue stated that “under the 1947 Nuremberg Code, MPs, doctors and nurses can be hanged if found guilty of medical experimentation”. Elsewhere, the magazine has called for a “Second Nuremberg Trials”, referring to the execution of leading Nazis in 1945.