At the beginning of this year, I started making a film about 5G
and the people that claim it makes them ill.
She probably died as a result of 5G,
but we can't prove anything.
This movement had become a phenomenon,
with conspiracy theories being spread through Facebook groups,
political parties and protests.
5G's here to kill.
Its members claimed that 5G was
threatening to kill off their families,
causing mental health issues, cancer, infertility,
Alzheimer's and autism.
Gives a bigger risk of cancer.
It can affect the heart rhythm.
Smart meters as well, which are being rolled out like sweets.
Now they even claim that it's linked to the coronavirus pandemic,
and impassioned disciples
are burning down mobile phone masts around the world,
and spreading misinformation
encouraging people to ignore safety measures,
and interfering with vital communication services,
endangering people's lives.
To understand how the 5G conspiracy theory has spread so quickly,
I spoke with Dr. David Robert Grimes,
an expert on how science and society interact.
What are the concerns around implementing 5G across the country?
It's really interesting because a lot of the fears that are
surrounding 5G at the moment are actually echoes of previous fears.
A lot of them have superficial or indeed quite deep resemblance to
stuff that was said about WiFi networks 15 years ago.
What is interesting now, I suppose, is that the fears we're hearing
have gotten a lot more traction.
But why is it that these fears are now going further than
any of the previous ones?
There's two reasons.
Firstly, the idea of the 5G networks is essentially, at the moment
we're using between 2 and 5GHz as the kind of frequency we operate in.
That's become very, very congested.
The idea of 5G is to go a little bit further up the spectrum,
between 6 and 25GHz.
That sounds like a huge increase,
but on the scheme of the electromagnetic spectrum,
that's nothing.
The most powerful photon or particle of light that could be a 5G particle
would still be about 17,000 times less energetic than
the weakest possible visible light.
So if you're really, really concerned about 5G,
you should be terrified of light bulbs.
The other part of it, I think, is that people need to
build more transmitters.
They're lower power, but you have to build a lot more of them.
People see this, they see these being put on poles
and things like that, and they get panicky.
But the bigger factor, I think, is the rise of disinformation online.
The anti-5G conspiracy is sustained through videos and articles
posted on social media.
One man in particular is the focal point of the movement,
Mark Steele.
This is an environmental reckless crime.
Mark's online ramblings about 5G have taken a more extreme position,
with his videos being shared widely.
We've got LED street lights in Gateshead
with 5G technology attached to it.
We've got children bleeding from the nose.
We've got people being sick.
We've got people dying.
-Mark. -Hi, Josh.
You told us to meet you outside Gateshead's council,
and you've recently had a dispute, a conflict with them.
Can you tell me a bit about that?
Gateshead Council said I was a conspiracy theorist
and that's why they had to get me gagged.
Because I was frightening people in the local community,
vulnerable people, by telling them that
the 5G LED street light would kill them.
If you look around, you see here...
there's no birds.
And that was because of the levels of radiation
that we were measuring in the area.
If you look around here, you'll see there's no bees, no wasps,
there's nothing.
There's absolutely not a single sparrow.
This is impossible.
In fact, there was one of the free papers where they've said,
"They went on holiday."
Well, I'd like to know where the sparrows go on holiday
because they're an indigenous bird.
The 25 milliwatt transmitter on the top of that street light...
-Where's that? -That's it, there.
It's an aerial on top of the lamp.
And you're saying this is what sends a 5G signal?
It's called a DEW, D-E-W: direct energy weapon.
That's what's underneath that small black cover.
The antenna that's in that street light,
that's just a cover.
People who often will confidently assert conspiracy theories,
really, when they are tested,
often have the lowest level of knowledge about
the thing on which they opine.
I think that belief is a strange thing.
I think you can convince yourself you believe something
if it makes you feel good about yourself.
One of the biggest motivators of people spreading
these conspiracy theories is the idea of them having special knowledge.
So it doesn't matter if you're an expert in that field,
they know more than you because you're a part of the conspiracy
or you're just an idiot.
So that's called 'illusory superiority' or 'illusory knowledge'.
And it's very, very alluring to certain people.
Narcissism is a factor behind this.
When people spread conspiracy theories,
they get a sense of satisfaction out of it.
They feel like they're special.
So sometimes the people perpetuating this are doing it for
their own gratification.
But at a long-term cost to public understanding of science and medicine
and ultimately sometimes to public health.
Yeah, most definitely.
Fear is a great motivator in the spread of misinformation online.
But Mark himself seems to have been convinced about the dangers of 5G.
I wear this protective eyewear 24/7.
The sunglasses?
Well, the mirror lens...
That irridium coating that mirror lens,
what it does, it reflects the microwave radiation back out.
That's how I know how dangerous this microwave radiation is.
How many of us would you say have been affected by 5G?
Millions, millions across Europe.
The report--
But we're not feeling any of the symptoms.
Well, not yet.
You'll have a few dodgy nights, maybe a bit of a panic attack.
You don't know what's caused it,
you just think you may have had a bad night on the drink.
For all you know, it's microwave radiation on the transmitter
outside your bedroom window.
The vast majority of people are asleep.
The plan of action is to increase our number across the country
and to increase the resistance against this crime,
and bring the criminals behind it to court, and to justice.
This is bigger than the Holocaust.
If anybody thinks this is going to kill six million, think again.
This is going to kill billions.
You've people that I would count as victims of conspiracy theories,
they hear frightening things and they become reticent
or terrified.
A lot of people that are now apprehensive of 5G
aren't dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorists,
they've just heard something scary.
Mark has raised over £30,000 from various crowdfunding links
in order to pay for legal costs.
This money comes from loyal followers like Greg and Claire,
who have blamed their health problems on 5G and electromagnetic radiation.
-Hiya. Hi, Greg? Josh.
Hiya, nice to meet you. Come on in.
They're so concerned about radiation
that they've put baking foil on their walls to block the signals.
Would you like me to switch my phone off?
-Yes, please. -No problem.
Can you tell me about your quirky decoration?
We were getting ill from the RF pollution in the area,
it was coming from from next door.
-Next door's WiFi. -Yeah, their WiFi.
We approached her, and she basically said, "I don't care."
I'm like, "Right. Fine."
So we watched a couple of videos, looked into materials
for blocking WiFi routers.
And the thing that came up best was good old-fashioned Bacofoil.
From the neighbor's WiFi upstairs,
in the passage at the top.
It's microwave radiation, folks. RF.
What was the thing that made you realize that
your illness was connected to--
It was the 5G.
I found out about the 5G in Gateshead.
My friend came to us one day,
and she says, "My son's starting to bleed at the nose."
I thought, "Blooming heck, this is what I'm getting."
I felt like I was dying.
-I really did. -That bad?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to die.
-So it was actual physical pain? -Yeah, yeah.
-It was awful. -Physical pain.
Because people say it's psychosomatic, it's in your head.
That's ****, right?
Had you consulted a GP before you--
It's not recognized.
-Yeah, GPs... -It's not recognized.
The GPs don't recognize it.
Not even your symptoms?
-No. -They'll blame it on something else.
People are saying that these 5G masts have been put into their area
and all of a sudden they've started to feel unwell,
having nosebleeds, headaches.
Well, what's brought that about?
See, this is a classic example of what's called the 'nocebo effect'.
If you look at the history of electromagnetic hypersensitivity,
which is ostensibly an illness people get
where they're allergic to WiFi.
Is that real? Is electromagnetic sensitivity real?
It's not recognized by the WHO,
it's not recognized by any medical body.
The psychosomatic component that these people are truly suffering
is recognized, they most certainly are.
An illness, even if it is not caused by what you think it is,
is still something that you don't want people to suffer.
But what they do, or what they have done in the past,
are called provocation studies, where you essentially put someone
who identifies as allergic to phone signal into a room with a box.
And you tell them the box is transmitting radio frequency signals,
and they immediately act ill.
Often, that box is not a real box, it's a sham source.
The fact that they have to be aware, or at least think they're aware,
of a source being there or not
is indicative of the fact this is a conditioned response.
This is a response to what they perceive is going to happen to them
rather than being caused by the thing itself.
And for that reason, electromagnetic hypersensitivity
is not recognized as an illness caused by electromagnetic radiation.
So, you guys said you did a lot of research on YouTube
about what you're experiencing.
Did the Internet actually provide solutions to your symptoms?
-Yeah, yeah. -Yeah.
Where we did the research, there's nothing else out there
where else you can go, really.
Yeah, I got in touch with Mark Steele
about our friend's boy bleeding at the nose at school.
He says, "Yeah, it's radio frequency radiation poisoning."
If you hadn't come across Mark and all of his teachings,
do you think would be on the path that you're on now?
-No. -No, we wouldn't.
We'd still be suffering and not knowing what's gone on.
Probably would have gone to the GP's,
been put on a lot of medication that actually is poison anyway.
Getting sicker and sicker and sicker, and eventually die.
People do tend to have fears about new technology.
We share things that outrage or frighten us a lot more than
things that are more sober-headed.
So if I see two headlines,
one saying, "5G is unlikely to cause us any harm,"
and another one that says, "5G is going to kill us all,"
I'm far more likely to share the one that gives me
the prophecies of doom.
And that's human nature, unfortunately,
and something that, in the Internet age,
we really have to be a little bit more skeptical
if we're to avoid the negative implications of that.
We've built a society much of which pivots on science and technology,
and yet cleverly arranged things that
most no one understands science and technology.
I think it goes back to the fact that
we have this amazing tool in the Internet,
yet we still have all these human vices.
And at the moment we've kind of combined them in a terrible way.
We do need to learn to be more pragmatic, more skeptical,
and more prone to reflect rather than react.
And until we do that, we're going to use social media and the Internet
to harm ourselves more than help ourselves.