Sandi Adams and antisemitism (why she should never have been invited to speak in Stroud)

Our origins as a group lie in a letter written asking the Stroud Freedom Group to withdraw an invitation to Sandi Adams to speak at a rally in November 2020. We were concerned about antisemitic content on her website, which we discuss below (featuring some screenshots as evidence at the end of the piece). Please be aware that this article has to discuss and feature vile antisemitism by necessity to make our argument. Not only did the ‘Stroud Freedom Group’ fail to ever seriously respond to these concerns, it instead chose to invite Sandi Adams to speak again in this town, this time at a public meeting held at The Old Convent on 1st December 2022 (screenshot 1).

We hope that a longer piece – we apologise for the length in advance – might convince members of the Stroud Freedom Group to think more deeply before they pick their next speakers. We also trust that others are capable of drawing conclusions about the nature of this group from their pattern of behaviour: a willingness to ignore and endorse those who engage in antisemitism. This, of course, isn’t the first time the group has hosted a speaker with a history of promoting antisemitism. We still have no formal reply from the group to our concerns about the article in The Light defending a man convicted of ‘inciting racial hatred’ against Jewish people, and defending his Holocaust denial (though some members of the Stroud Freedom Group have acknowledged this article shouldn’t have been published).

In the November 2020 letter written by three members of what has become Community Solidarity Stroud District, we raised the following content on Sandi Adams’ website as concerning:

• Her endorsement of a notorious, highly antisemitic pro-Nazi Holocaust denial documentary Europa: The Last Battle (12-hours long). She argued in her post that the documentary convinced her that ‘Churchill was in the pockets of the Jewish bankers’ and described it as forming a ‘game-changer in terms of embracing an ‘alternative truth’ about modern events in Europe’ – see screenshot 2. A brief description of the film and it’s antisemitic approach can be found here)
• A webpage she wrote in July 2020 entitled “The truth IS anti-Semitic” in which she argued that “Jewish lobbying groups in many areas of life are powerful and insidious” (screenshot 3). She is mostly careful to restrict her comments to “extreme interpretations of Judaism” and “Zionism”, but the language conjures up the oldest conspiracy going, that of antisemitism. For example, she talks about “treacherous intent”, a global plan for “cultural destruction” and seeing people as “cattle”. She also says it is “vexatious” if people are not allowed to “question the holocaust”, and launches into a garbled discussion of the most notorious antisemitic hoax in history, the fake “Protocols of the Elders of Zion…real or not”.
• A webpage she wrote titled “The World Order – How It Works (there’s nothing particularly new about it)” (screenshot 4). While avoiding directly making the antisemitic claim that the Jews run the world, it approvingly cites and references vile Jew-haters such as Eustace Mullins as sources, and uses barely-coded language such as “At the present moment in the evolution of the World Order a captive, but immensely powerful United States does the bidding of the Illuminati Zionist international bankers.”

Though the group accused us of being ‘libellous’, these pages have since been deleted – which suggests Adams did not want attention drawn to them by people who would point out that the antisemitism was blatant and inexcusable. It is clear that their deletion does not reflect a change in attitude toward antisemitism on the part of Adams. Sandi Adams’ website still hosts antisemitic content – a page titled “The Crucifixion of Russia” (screenshot 5) hosts a documentary film for which the full title is “The Jewish Crucifixion of Russia” (screenshot 6). The antisemitism of the title alone is obvious – framing Jews as “Christ killers” has been a theme of antisemites for centuries. But just to make sure, Adams leaves us in no doubt about the reasons she is hosting this 100 minute propaganda piece on her website – she enthuses about the way the film presents “the role of the UK, US and other countries in supporting the world wars and extermination of eastern European cultures with the help of key Jewish bankers and families”. The video concludes “Communism was always a Jewish tool, used to purge Christianity and freedom. Although it is believed the Soviets lost power years ago, the Jewish hand behind it is very much alive today. The Soviets and their system of psychological warfare never disappeared. The psychological warfare being waged against us all is very much the remnants of Communism, that serve to enslave us without a single shot being fired.” When first posting her endorsement of this video, Adams described it as “A vital examination of Russia’s 20th Century history” and added a grossly antisemitic cartoon. The image is made up of a Jewish ‘puppetmaster’ under a Star-of-David pulling the strings behind the scenes, and controlling both Stalin/Bolshevism and Churchill (who is selected to represent Zionism), while a stereotype of a Jew waits for a hand out in front of them (screenshot 7). The illustration bears a resemblance to similar imagery used by the Nazis (see the Antisemitism Policy Trust’s briefing on Antisemitic Imagery and Caricatures). All of this takes the notorious forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and builds upon it – presenting Jews as controllers of world events and warmongers in ways which bear no relationship to reality, and instead scapegoat entire communities in ways which contain clear potential for harm.

The documentary film isn’t the only example of antisemitic content that remains. To this day, the ‘Introduction’ page that is the first thing visitors see on the site references “The propaganda machine of the “Deep State” and “Rothschild Banking Dynasty””. There is no reason to pick on this not especially remarkable Jewish family of bankers rather than any other or critiquing the financial system more broadly, than the long history of antisemitism surrounding the name Rothschild. At best this is a dog-whistle to antisemites, at worst, it’s picking up on an antisemitic theme that originated in 1846 but was given renewed impetus by a Goebbels film made by the Nazi government in 1940 (Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo). 

It’s also worth writing about the content on Sandi Adams’ website that isn’t antisemitic but is concerning. One of Sandi Adam’s bizarre obsessions is with “Agenda 21”, which she describes as “indicative of a longer plan of human population control and world domination that has its roots and tentacles spread far and wide through-out all areas of modern life and culture for over 130 years.” Without shame, Adams and other conspiracy theorists have – since the year 2021 to which “Agenda 21” was oriented has passed – simply copy-pasted their theories into reheated scaremongering about “Agenda 30”.

In fact Agenda 21 is a non-binding planning paper, adopted by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. It was so inoffensive that the leaders of 177 countries were able to sign up to it, including US president George H W Bush. But it is not a treaty. “It has no force of law, no enforcement mechanisms, no penalties, and no significant funding. It is not even a top-down recommendation, seeking instead to encourage communities around the world to come up with their own solutions” to environmental problems. Given the weakness of government attempts to deal with environmental problems, it is a bizarre basis for a conspiracy theory.

But in the decades since, right-wing groups in the US (like the John Birch Society, the American Policy Center, and Sovereignty.net), have claimed that this document is a blueprint for a totalitarian world government. Opposition to Agenda 21 is now a touchstone of loyalty to right-wing politicians and talk show hosts in America, and is increasingly part of the mainstream right including the Republican National Committee. It’s been so successful that even local county-level planning officials have been voted out for being insufficiently critical of Agenda 21.

It’s part of a general rejection by the American right of all international institutions, from the League of Nations and onwards, now blended with a rejection of any measures intended to prevent climate change. And now it’s here in the UK too, courtesy of promoters of climate change denial like Sandi Adams, Piers Corbyn and The Light.

More information from Agenda 21: The UN, Sustainability and Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the SPLC write: “as with all such baseless propaganda, the hysteria over it has had the effect of poisoning any kind of rational discussion of the very real challenges we face — challenges that are essential to tackle head-on in an increasingly complex and stressed world” .

Screenshots – and links where appropriate to archived versions of the webpages which allow for checking the veracity of the content without contributing to Sandi Adam’s webstats or the popularity of her website in search engines.

1. Public meeting held at The Old Convent, hosted by Stroud Freedom Group
2. Sandi Adam’s endorsement of a notorious, highly antisemitic pro-Nazi, vHolocaust denial documentary Europa: The Last Battle

3. Sandi Adams’ July 2020 website page titled entitled “The truth IS anti-Semitic”

4. A webpage on Sandi Adam’s website titled “The World Order – How It Works (there’s nothing particularly new about it)”

5. A page on Sandi Adams’ website titled “The Crucifixion of Russia” 

6. Full title of the video hosted on the above page, “The Jewish Crucifixion of Russia”

7. Grossly antisemitic cartoon featured on the initial version of the above page, before it was replaced by an embedded version of the video.