Introduction
On Tuesday 19th March we learned that some people were trying to put on two Nazi meetings in Stroud, one to mark the “135th anniversary of Hitler’s birth”, and one to promote an antisemitic conspiracy theory used by Hitler to justify killing millions of Jews. This was shocking and distressing to many. On this webpage we provide detail about the Nazi Meetings, the group that organised them, the planned speaker, and some background context.
Were Nazi Meetings really planned in Stroud?
Unfortunately, yes. Shocking as it seems, the advert for the meetings cannot be read any other way. Below we reproduce the graphic used as an advert. The advert was shared in online channels and on an email list run by the group hosting the event, Project Libertas. A content warning – the image below contains two propaganda images of Adolf Hitler – one posing as if to demonstrate strength with a clearly visible swastika armband, another humanising Hitler through his companionship with a dog. The advert also features a piece of text outlining core elements of the antisemitic conspiracy theory of “The Protocols” and a variant of these. The text in one part of the graphic asserts that “there is an ancient and enduring rancour for the Gentile by certain Jews” and talks of “work to establish Jewish hegemony of the world” as if this is a real problem, rather than a paranoid racist fantasy.
Notably, in their email containing the advert, the team behind the meetings wrote: “Project Libertas has the greatest pleasure & is extremely excited to introduce Author John Hamer for two back to back talks”, describing the events as “mind altering & mind expanding”, and offering the chance to meet “like-minded people”. The Nazi meetings were to cost £12 each, but the organisers offered a special offer price for those wanting to attend both meetings. All of this makes it very clear that the organisers were committed to – and enthusiastic about – the speaker and his chosen topics, and to hosting an event on “the 135th Anniversary of Hitler’s birth”.
What did Community Solidarity Stroud District do about this? What happened next?
We held an organising meeting with representatives of other groups, forming the Fascist Free Stroud coalition. The coalition launched an open letter making community opposition to the Nazi meetings clear, produced leaflets which were handed out in Stroud High St on the 23rd March, and issued a press release (covered by StroudTimes and Amplify Stroud) – all with the purpose of inviting people to a public meeting on 30th March to “share ideas and work together to keep Nazi-sympathisers out of Gloucestershire”. On 25th March we received an email from Project Libertas informing us they had “cancelled the event”. We responded with a statement, and decided to go ahead with our meeting “to share ideas about how we respond to the threat this has highlighted”. The meeting was well attended, and we will be holding further meetings and community trainings as a result. We are grateful to our friends in Stroud Against Racism, Stroud District Together with Refugees and the Radical Youth Space for Educations (RYSE) for their solidarity and support.
Didn’t the organisers apologise?
The organisers did send out an “apology” to people on their email list, to the organisations including ours that wrote an open letter making community opposition to the Nazi meetings clear, and to some other local people or organisations. The “apology” claims to be “heartfelt” and to recognise “the distress caused” but talks as if their poster only “seemed to suggest support for fascist and anti-Semitic [sic] views]. The poster didn’t “seem” to suggest this, it clearly offered support for these ideas. The day after the cancellation/”apology” the Fascist Free Stroud coalition issued an initial statement about the cancellation of the meetings, in which we said:
“the organisers of these Nazi events have tried to claim that it “wasn’t their intention” to imply support for fascist and antisemitic views, which is a sick joke when their advert was a disgusting collection of Jew-baiting images and obviously antisemitic claims that Jews are seeking to ‘establish hegemony over the world’.”
The organisers then go on to undermine even this ham-fisted “apology” by emphasising that their “platform for free speech” means “challenging ‘official’ narratives” (which in context clearly means the Holocaust), and suggesting “alternative insights” of the kind featured in the events with John Hamer can “help our community to thrive”. Remember that this is the organisation that wrote that they had “the greatest pleasure” and were “extremely excited to introduce Author John Hamer” for these talks. Stroud will not “thrive” under fascism.
Who organised this? Who are Project Libertas?
Project Libertas is a contrarian/conspiratorial group that organises events in Stroud. It is a split from other local groups such as “Stroud Freedom Group”, “The Beacon”, or “The Beacon St Roses” – which were the names used to advertise events which are now listed on the Project Libertas Eventbrite page.
Previous events have focused on climate denial, the “weaponization of psychology”, contrarian ideas about the pandemic, and esoteric theories about the music industry and the occult.
In October 2022, an ‘evening with James Delingpole’ event was advertised as having been “organised by the Stroud Freedom Group”. The flyer explained that “The group runs a High Street stall (The “InfoHug”) on Fridays and Saturdays. Now, the event is listed as a past event on the Project Libertas Eventbrite page. This illustrates the connections between the groups, and shows the date of the split to be after October 2022. As an aside, we organised an open letter calling on Stroud Freedom Group to withdraw the invitation to James Delingpole at the time, in part because of his minimisation of the Holocaust and associations with white nationalists.
Who is John Hamer?
Two of Hamer’s books: The Falsification of History and The Falsification of Science have been described as “reference bibles for conspiracy theory” (by fellow conspiracy theorists).
Hamer has had a YouTube channel but this has been suspended so that videos with titles like “We Have Been Hoodwinked Our Entire Lives” can no longer be viewed. He now has a channel on the BitChute platform – favoured by Nazis and other hateful people because of its lack of restrictions. On this channel he has collaborated with Mark Devlin (discussed below – someone who has broadcast Holocaust deniers), and flat earther Pete Murphy, among others. In an interview on James Delingpole’s podcast, he talks about the famous photo of Churchill showing the victory sign and says that this is a “sign of the beast” and that “Churchill was a practicing satanist”. Both Delingpole and Hamer discuss at length the Earth being flat.
Hamer has sent some really vile tweets showing his Holocaust denial (he refers to the “Holofraud”), conspiracy theories about Jewish people (“Zionist agenda for world domination”), Jo Cox’s murder, and climate change – just for example. His tweet on climate denial is a share of Henry Makow – a Jew-hater we have mentioned previously. His tweet on Jo Cox references disaster troll and conspiracy theorist Richard Hall, who recently lost a court case against survivors of the Manchester Bombings.
Hamer openly supports white nationalism (which he calls “the ideal”, while also referring to ‘anti-white media’ in a tweet also containing a nasty antisemitic caricature). In the paragraph above you can find links to these tweets on archive.org (which stores the tweets even if Hamer deletes them, and prevents him from getting direct attention to his twitter profile). Below we reproduce the tweets in the form of screenshots. We apologise for the content – skip if if you prefer – but felt it necessary to include to make clear just how committed to his hateful ideas Hamer is. This is not someone who should have been invited to speak in Stroud by anyone.
It is worth saying that Hamer has had two pieces published in The Light paper, one of which talks of how “We have a very tightly Zionist-controlled, indirect form of democracy with no real say in how the government is run.” The way in which this criticism of the limitations of democratic influence in the UK and the form of anti-Zionism here go well beyond legitimate critique of the state of Israel or the political ideology of Zionism and clearly into antisemitic conspiracy theory – particularly when viewed alongside Hamer’s other comments. This is important to remember when we consider the statement from the distributors of The Light paper in Stroud attempting to distance themselves from the Nazi Meetings.
What’s the deal with the venue, The Old Convent?
The venue for the events: The Old Convent at Beeches Green in Stroud. This has been the venue for previous Project Libertas events. Their previous meeting was held at the same venue on the 19th March on the theme “What’s your picture of evil and how it works in the world? Is it only an outer phenomena, or is there a parallel inner story”. For many people, one “picture of evil” would be the pictures of Hitler features on their advert for the April events.
The Old Convent was also the intended venue for ‘comedy show’ with Katie Hopkins in September 2023. On that occasion, the owner of the venue pulled the event following objection from the community and claimed he had not been informed that the booking had been for Katie Hopkins – a woman who openly admits to being racist, was banned from South Africa for spreading racial hatred, and who has spent considerable time working with far-right organisations and individuals.
Prior to the March event, Project Libertas hosted an event in November 2023 at The Convent called “Net Zero – the Final Frontier” or “Exposing Net Zero-Agenda 2030” depending on the advert. This event featured notorious climate denier James Delingpole, Sandi Adams – who has hosted an extensive list of antisemitic and neo-Nazi content on her website (as we’ve written about before), and Andrew Bridgen MP – expelled from the Conservative Party for making disgusting and ridiculous comparisons between the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and The Holocaust. Delingpole and Adams were returning to Stroud for return visits to The Old Convent – Delingpole also spoke to a public meeting in October 2022, Adams previously in December 2022.
How did we get to an event marking Hitler’s birthday and promoting the Protocols as real?
Community Solidarity Stroud District was formed in January 2022 in response to the publication of an article in The Light paper defending someone convicted of incitement to racial hatred. Graham Hart had broadcast genocidal antisemitism, as well as Holocaust denial. The paper misled readers by failing to mention the former, and minimised the latter as merely a ‘different view of history’.
Previous events organised by Project Libertas/Stroud Freedom Group not have been as explicit, but there was a clear direction of travel.
One event organised by Project Libertas in November 2023 (which we distributed leaflets about – under the heading “Don’t let conspiracy influencers pull you into their hateful rabbit hole”) is particularly notable. It featured Sandi Adams, James Delingpole and Andrew Bridgen MP – all of whom have engaged in some form of antisemitism, and with two of the three pointing people to far-right voices. Adams was returning to Stroud for the third time despite efforts by local Jewish people to convey concerns about the extensive antisemitism hosted on her website. As we wrote in our leaflet: “In July 2020 Adams published an article titled The Truth is anti-Semitic which repeated vile claims that have been and are still used to persecute the Jewish community and are extremely harmful. Adams also hosted a notorious, 12-hour long highly antisemitic pro-Nazi Holocaust denial documentary. There also remains a post on her website (featured on her home page) about The New World Order which contains quotes from notorious Jew-hater Douglas Reed, references the infamous antisemitic forgery the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, and praises ‘brave’ holocaust deniers Kevin Barret and Nicholas Kollerstrom – among other antisemitic content.”
James Delingpole was returning for a second visit despite a previous Community Solidarity Stroud District open letter signed by 217 people. In a 2013 article for the Daily Telegraph, Delingpole talked of the need for a “Climate Nuremberg” directed at climate scientists, activists, and journalists – adding to the climate denialism with a form of Holocaust minimisation/denial (as well as suggesting “George Monbiot be hanged by the neck”). In a 2012 article for The Spectator, Delingpole also used a modernised version of Kulturbolschewismus conspiracy used by Nazis to accuse Jewish intellectuals of degeneracy (translating as “cultural Bolshevism”) to explain the persistence of racism. Since the pandemic, Delingpole has been embracing increasingly extreme conspiracy theories and their politically extreme proponents including Colin Robertson, a white nationalist who has enthused about “torpedo[ing] boats carrying refugees”.
Speaking alongside Adams and Delingpole at the Project Libertas was MP Andrew Bridgen. Bridgen was suspended and later expelled from the Conservative Party for a tweet that linked to an article from ZeroHedge, a libertarian and conspiracy theory website, making his own disgusting and ridiculous comparison between the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the Holocaust.
Mark Devlin spoke at the Old Convent in Stroud in June and October 2022. His podcasts include interviews with Holocaust denier Nicholas Kollerstrom, and with raving Jew-hater Henry Makow, just for example. Devlin describes Makow as “controversial”; others would say bizarre racist, since Makow spends his time on “…the claim that the Holocaust was grossly exaggerated, and that the document known as the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion was genuine”.
Project Libertas were also behind two recent events featuring Katie Hopkins. Hopkins left MailOnline ‘by mutual consent’ in 2017 after giving a speech attacking Muslims to far right groups. She was reported to have told her audience they should ‘arm themselves’ and ‘fight for their country’, against “institutionalised discrimination against whites”. Shortly before her appearances in Stroud, an interview with her was published in “The Light” paper, headlined “Loving and laughing across Britain”. Hopkins is presented as a member of the “truth movement” as she attacks “leftist wokedom”. No mention is made of her history of racist and bigoted comments. She refers to being ‘banned from South Africa’ as a badge of honour, but doesn’t mention that this was “for spreading racial hatred”. Nor does it mention that Hopkins told Huck magazine “it doesn’t really matter if you call me a racist” in 2018, nor any of her meetings with far-right organisations, including at conferences which she promoted or spoke at featuring Holocaust deniers.
Community Solidarity Stroud District has written extensively about other examples of “The Light” paper (which is distributed in Stroud) promoting the ideas, organisations, and personalities of the far right. As well as Hopkins, this includes – for example – several articles by Anne Marie Waters (AMW), whose Islamophobic and anti-migrant views are so extreme that other right-wingers found her too extreme for UKIP (at least until a recent rule change which has seen her become Justice Secretary for the party), with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage called her and her supporters “Nazis and racists”. One of AMW’s articles in The Light is all about promoting Tommy Robinson. Robinson is one of the most well known far right activists in Britain. He was the founder of the violent far right street movement the ‘English Defence League’. Before this he was a member of the far right British National Party. With AMW he was a co-founder of far right Islamophobic organisation Pegida UK. There are many articles by Niall McCrae, a former lecturer involved in far right organisation Hearts of Oak, with Tommy Robinson. One is an obituary of Jeff Wyatt, former Deputy Leader of the For Britain party.
Issue 9 includes an article (“Ten Steps To Mass Mind Control”) by someone with the pen-name “Lasha Darkmoon”. The pen-name Lasha Darkmoon is also used by a frequent contributor to Nazi websites. The article itself describes Holocaust denial as “the number one heresy of our day”. Darkmoon suggests there is an effort to “discredit the Truth… labelled a ‘conspiracy theory’”. This is not the only example of The Light or its supporters tolerating or endorsing Holocaust denial. The Light previously defended a man convicted of inciting racial hatred for making violent threats to Jewish people. Their article presented no criticism of the gross ways in which he “question[ed] the official account of the Holocaust”.
Didn’t the people who distribute The Light in Stroud condemn the events?
It is true that the group which hand out “The Light” in Stroud put out their own statement about the Nazi meetings – which was published in the Stroud News and Journal (see photo below).
Rather than stating clearly that the publicity material was disgusting, they argued the advert “could easily and justifiably be construed as unalloyed nazi apologism”. They say the find this “disturbing and unreservedly reject” it but… they then suggest that “Project Libertas explain more fully the nature, aims and content of this event”, which seems to suggest they are looking for ways not to reject it. They go on to suggest that “sober historical discussion about Hitler and Nazism may be welcomed, even if it challenges prevailing viewpoints in an evidence-based way”. This is a waffly way to make excuses for Holocaust denial, minimisation, and revisionist history. The “Stroud Info Hub” seems to want to have it both ways – to distance themselves from an obviously objectionable event, while suggesting it should have simply been advertised in a less obvious way, and that similar events would be welcome. Given the paper they hand out has also featured articles by John Hamer, this statement is embarassing at best. There is no recognition of the role these people have played in getting us to this point.
Are all the people involved in Project Libertas or who attend their events Nazi-sympathisers or far-right?
What about those who hand out “The Light” in Stroud and other towns around the country?
We don’t think all of the people handing out “The Light” paper or organising other events under the Project Libertas name can be described as far right. Many of them are attacted to the paper on the basis it presents ‘alternative’ ideas and seem to be naive about the range of content in the paper. However, we don’t think we should discount the possibility that some of the people who distribute the paper do believe in the far right ideas or have associations to the far right organisations and individuals that are promoted in the paper or at these sorts of events.
We have to ask why anyone would still choose to have any relationship with people who organised an event to mark the anniversary of Hitler’s birth.
We invite everyone who has been sympathetic to these groups, and The Light paper, to reconsider.
As we wrote in our first piece in January 2021: “We ask that you take the time to listen, to research the subject.” Whatever we think of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it was dealt with, none of us should have anything to do with organisations that promote Nazis or the far right.
Community Solidarity Stroud District 