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25 Jun, 2020 18:30

A beacon of hope: Why former XR activist Zion Lights is RIGHT to follow science and quit the misguided leftist cult

A beacon of hope: Why former XR activist Zion Lights is RIGHT to follow science and quit the misguided leftist cult

The astonishing conversion of Zion Lights from an Extinction Rebellion activist to a backer of nuclear energy shows that scientific facts should always take precedence over extremist dogma.

Being the bigot I am, I never thought I would have many niceties to say about someone named Zion Lights. 

Particularly Zion Lights who, until recently, was a spokesperson for the enviro-Marxist movement Extinction Rebellion UK (XR) and the founder of its climate-change reporting newspaper The Hourglass. 

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Yet here I am, sitting at my desk, relishing the fact that the words of one Zion Lights have made my day. Zion, you see, has begun to right her wrongs after quitting XR and expressing her enthusiasm for nuclear energy instead.

Lights’ lightbulb moment occurred after she took a grilling on the BBC’s Andrew Neil Show last fall. As she wrote in a piece for the free London paper City AM, her reasons for quitting the cult-like group are both numerous and obvious, but ultimately boil down to the group’s anti-scientific sentiments, which betray its apparent mission.

This is a theme seen throughout much of the left’s causes these days, as, for all its huffing and puffing, XR has brought little in the way of scientifically sound solutions to the table.

Instead, the left relies on emotional blackmail, groupthink and ritual to pressurize would-be dissenters into kowtowing to its crazy ideas: the washing of one another’s feet, mass scenes of hysteria, and public shaming to name but a few. 

Indeed, as I wrote last week, I thought the scientific community had sunk to a new low, following its acceptance of the Marxist #ShutDownSTEM. 

But, to my delight, Lights’ change of heart reminds us that, much like the Enlightenment that came before it, shamanistic belief systems will never be able to compete with empirically proven science, no matter how long they manage to plague our planet.

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As Lights herself states in her article, she had “been duped into anti-science sentiment all this time,” and, after “reading up on” the subject of nuclear power, she realised that her irrational fears stemmed not from the science, but from the activist community she engaged in. For Zion, it would seem that God – in this case, Gaia – is well and truly dead. 

Similar views are hinted at in the piece in regard to genetically modified (GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) crops – a sticking point for environmentalists, who continue to ignore the science and protest this objective progress. As far back as 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a report that analysed hundreds of scientific papers and “found no substantiated evidence that foods from GE crops were less safe than foods from non-GE crops.” Despite the mounting evidence, it looks as if XR still hasn’t received the memo.

But what is important to remember here is that, as much as it is essential to celebrate reason’s triumph over creed, what is also wholesome about this tale is that it’s the story of an individual escaping what is little more than a cult. 

Because, as with any cult, it seems that Lights’ deviation from XR’s dogma was not well received. “To my surprise, when I shared the data with my anti-nuclear friends, they argued against the science. Alas, we parted ways,” she writes, before beseeching her fellow environmentalists to see the error of their ways.

So, thank you, Zion Lights, for showing us that no individual is a lost cause, and that there’s still a place in the world for rigorous scientific thought. Let this development also serve as a warning to XR. Even with its cult-like sensibilities, sense has defeated its dishonest ways of working. After all, as the old saying goes, beware the zeal of the convert. Well done, Zion. 

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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