Community Solidarity Stroud District

More dodgy meetings from Project Libertas at the Old Convent

In April a group called “Project Libertas” planned to host two Nazi meetings in Stroud – celebrating Hitler’s birthday and promoting the antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

Community opposition led to the organisers cancelling these meetings.

The group is a splinter from the group that hands out “The Light” – paper. They’re a distinct group but with a pretty similar approach to the world.

It’s this group that was responsible for inviting Katie Hopkins to Stroud – not long after the paper had printed a fawning interview with her.

They continue to organise meetings with dodgy speakers who spread hatred and fear with baseless conspiracies.

Meanwhile, “The Light” paper has adopted the man who was due to speak at the Nazi meetings – John Hamer, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who spreads hatred of Jews and Muslims online – as a regular contributor. And the people who hand the paper out in Stroud seem to think that’s no big deal, and keep handing it out.

Dodgy events at The Old Convent

Sandi Adams has been invited to speak in Stroud 4 times, most recently by “Project Libertas”.

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.

Adams has blamed this content on her then website manager, deleting some items she claims were published without her knowledge or permission. However, she continues to host blantant antisemitism on her website, including a ‘documentary’ called The Jewish Crucifixion of Russia, which concludes “Although it is believed the Soviets lost power years ago, the Jewish hand behind [Communism] is very much alive today.” Adams describes this ‘vital’ and adds a grossly antisemitic cartoon featuring a Jewish ‘puppetmaster’.

As well as repeatedly hosting Sandi Adams, The Old Convent has been host to James Delingpole on at least two occasions – again at the invitation of “Project Libertas”.

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”.Before that, he had a long history not only of denying the science around climate change, but of attacking climate scientists and activists, to the point of repeatedly inciting violence.

Project Libertas has also organised two meetings at The Old Convent featuring Andrew Bridgen, a former MP expelled permanently from the Conservative party for making offensive and baseless comparisons between the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the Holocaust.

And the group is planning to hold a meeting with leader of the far-right Heritage Party David Kurten, who has recently been promoting “remigration” – the forced return of non-European immigrants and their descendants to their place of origin.

We don’t think anyone should have anything to do with The Old Convent until they take a clear stance against bringing hate to our town.

Below are adverts for the recent event featuring Sandi Adams and Andrew Bridgen, and the previous advert for the planned Nazi meetings Project Libertas intended to host – and which they advertised with images of Adolf Hitler and nasty content about “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

We joined the “Love not Hate – Stop the Far Right” rally in Stroud

On Saturday 10th August 2024, Stroud Love Music Hate Racism organised a rally in response to the racist riots and violence that had been taking place in the preceding week.

Emma Calcutt from Community Solidarity Stroud District read a statement on behalf of the group, which you can watch on our YouTube channel below – and share on Facebook at this link.

We’ll be adding more videos from the event as we can.

Join us at the Stop the Far Right protest in Stroud, 10th August 2024

Community Solidarity Stroud District invites all our supporters to join us at the Stop the Far Right – Stroud event tomorrow Saturday 10th August from 12noon at Wallbridge, organised by Stroud Love Music Hate Racism.

We have been distressed to see the dramatic upsurge in racist violence recently, as we were reeling from the horrific attack on children in Southport. Sadly, neither of these things have come out of the blue. Racism has been rising in recent years, particularly targetting Muslims and asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants – but as always entwined with anti-Blackness and willing to scapegoat anyone who can be marginalised, as racists aim to promote forms of white supremacy and nostalgia for the days of imperialism.

Our group exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information. We launched in January 2022 to challenge the way in which a paper handed out for free in our District and nationally, calling itself “The Light”, had defended a man convicted of inciting racial hatred for broadcasting threats of violent antisemitism.

Since then we’ve written extensively on how “The Light” paper promotes the ideas, organisations, and individuals of the far right – including “Tommy Robinson”, whose work over decades and recent reappearance on twitter thanks to Elon Musk has done so much to stoke the racist violence we have seen in recent weeks. In Issue 31, “The Light” defended a previous protest that turned into a riot against asylum seekers being housed in a hotel in Liverpool, widely known to have been promoted by far right organisations including Patriotic Alternative.

Read our article on How “The Light” promotes the Far Right

In March 2023, “The Light” sought to suggest that “toxic masculinity”, and men’s “domination and rage” – of the kind resulting in the tragic consequences of the murders and violence inflicted in Southport – “could also be understood as men resorting to their innate biological responses in trying to cope when they find themselves trapped in an insane society.” And in February this year, it published an article that claimed “psychopathic” “elites” were deliberately “destroying” society through a programme of “mass economic immigration of alien cultures leading to the mass rape of young children”.

Read our article on the anti-women pattern of content in “The Light”

As This Ends Now said recently, “The weaponisation of this tragedy under the false guise of protecting women and girls is unacceptable, and a phenomenon we have seen before. This tragic crime should not be used as a justification for further hatred, racism and violence. Male violence against women and girls is an epidemic that cannot be solved by racist violence.”

This Ends Now statement – read in full

We will be at the Wallbridge protest on Saturday in solidarity with people fearing possible racist and misogynist violence locally, and as part of a national upsurge in anti-fascist activity which is sorely needed.

We know that those of us who oppose the far right, racist and misogynist violence are many. Yet we must not be complacent, nor think that Stroud is immune. And we must remember that it is not only mainstream media organisations and politicians who have pushed racist rhetoric – but publications and people presenting themselves as “alternative” or “independent”. And let’s not forget the so-called comedian Katie Hopkins, who called refugees cockroaches, and who the local far-right brought to Stroud to do her “standup” act. Twice.

In 2010 the far right British National Party attempted to set up their media office in Salmon Springs in Stroud. Community opposition saw them off, but this year we’ve seen concerning developments.

The recent general election featured an “Independent” candidate for Stroud’s MP Saskia Whitfield, a person who publicly shared the most blatant far right content. Her candidacy was supported by the “infohub” that hands out “The Light” paper. She thankfully won fewer than 300 votes, but while that is an embarrassing result of 0.5% of the vote, it is a significant number of people willing to vote for someone who thinks the UK fought on the wrong side in the second world war. And, of course, over 6,000 people in Stroud constituency voted for Farage’s Reform party and its attempt to scapegoat migrants for every problem in the UK (and many candidates with vile views).

Read our letter to backers of the Nazi-sympathising candidate and their responses

Earlier in the year, we saw the grim spectacle of people making excuses for two Nazi themed meetings – one organised to mark Hitler’s birthday, and another to promote the antisemitic conspiracy the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which the Nazis used to justify their genocide of European Jews.

Read our article about the Nazi meetings and the community response

Though the group that had organised these events cancelled them, “The Light” paper has since taken on the planned speaker, John Hamer, as a monthly contributor – giving him a platform to share antisemitic conspiracies about the reasons for the world wars.

Read our piece about John Hamer’s racist worldview

In recent years we have seen the traditional far right joined and frequently supported by a new phenomenon – what others have called “the cosmic right”, “mirror world“, “conspirituality“, or “diagonalism” – where conspiracy influencers draw disillusioned, vulnerable, or fearful people to baseless theories and far right bigotry. People interested in alternative ideas, who are critical of how government managed the pandemic, or public services, or the climate crisis, are being preyed on and recruited into movements that dress up old antisemitic conspiracies in new language, and present opposition to feminism and anything that can be deemed “woke” as part of a return to “natural” hierarchies alongside their enthusiasm for “natural” medicine.

As some of you will know, The Times revealed that the millionaire who first spread false information about the man who killed three children in Southport, is known for spreading false information about covid and climate change, as well as anti-trans bigotry. She had been promoted by TalkTV and GB News. The words in her tweet led, following amplification by a Russian fake news aggregator website, and hateful grifters Robinson, Andrew Tate and Nigel Farage (click for a collation of links for more background on this person and their part in the story)

Racist riots and attacks followed, making clear beyond doubt the terrible real life consequences that can follow a few words of misleading, racist content.

Join us, Stroud Against Racism, the Radical Youth Space for Educations (the RYSE) and others at Stop the Far Right – Stroud event tomorrow Saturday 10th August from 12noon at Wallbridge, organised by Stroud Love Music Hate Racism.

More – read the Radical Youth Space for Educations statement on this week’s race riots.

Read a statement from Stroud Against Racism.

Our letter to the Stroud News and Journal – in full

Madam,

Whilst the General Election result thankfully showed Stroud voters had little appetite for the fringe far right candidate they nominated, nonetheless Marcus Blackett and Richard House’s nonsense about our group, and about independent candidates, (including in the pages of this paper) must not be allowed to stand unchallenged.

It is regrettable that these individuals chose to nominate, for Stroud MP, someone who repeatedly quotes Hitler, suggests he has been unfairly maligned, promotes claims that the Allies “fought on the wrong side” in WW2 and we “should have fought with the fascists…not the other way round”, and repeatedly puts forward the idea that Hitler “cleaned up perverted Berlin” and that “once again” it’s time to do the same.

It is remarkable that when we warned them about their candidates’ extensive hateful social media history, her backers obfuscated, deflected, and reacted with wild and unfounded smears about us.

Why is it hard to understand that we choose to oppose the reactionary and extremist activities of the Info Hub stall crowd that distribute “The Light”, out of a sense of responsibility?

We are a group of citizens who have been raised, like most people in this country, to detest fascism and to know that it’s our civic duty to fight it when it rears its ugly face. Far from being the monolithic block alleged by House and Blackett, we include amongst our group, people who voted for at least three different major parties, and none.

Thankfully, “The Light” crowd’s fringe, Nazi-sympathising candidate, who they brought in from Cheltenham, got fewer than 300 votes (0.5%) and will hopefully now go away and leave Stroud in peace.

It would be wonderful if the purveyors of the reactionary fear-mongering, climate change denial, political nihilism and hatred of the Other contained in “The Light”, packed up and followed in her wake, and stopped blighting the district’s High Streets.

We look forward to SNJ printing this letter as our right to reply,

Yours faithfully,

Adam Horovitz, Alex Raeburn, Caroline Molloy, Christian Hayward, Denise Needleman, Emma Calcutt, Freddie Janke, Hannah Boss, James Beecher, Jacqui Stearn, Jeremy Green, Lynn Hanaan, Megan Sheer, Simon Jacobson – on behalf of Community Solidarity Stroud District

We sent the letter above to the Stroud News and Journal on Friday 5th July. On 10th July 2024, they published a heavily edited version of this letter – removing a lot of detail we feel is crucial. We don’t know why. The evidence for what we describe is available (and was shared with the editors of the paper). And yet, on the other hand, all sorts of false claims about our group have been printed or hosted in the comments section of their website without evidence.

What appeared in the paper is below, we’ve shown the sentences they chopped with ~~strikethrough text~~, as this best illustrates the impact of their editing. Why do you think they edited our letter?

Madam,

Whilst the General Election result thankfully showed Stroud voters had little appetite for the ~~fringe far right candidate~~ they nominated, nonetheless Marcus Blackett and Richard House’s nonsense about our group, and about independent candidates, (including in the pages of this paper) must not be allowed to stand unchallenged.

~~It is remarkable that when we warned them about their candidates’ extensive hateful social media history, her backers obfuscated, deflected, and reacted with wild and unfounded smears about us.~~

Why is it hard to understand that we choose to oppose the reactionary and extremist activities of the Info Hub stall crowd that distribute “The Light”, out of a sense of responsibility?

Thankfully, “The Light” crowd’s ~~fringe, Nazi-sympathising~~ candidate, who they brought in from Cheltenham, got fewer than 300 votes (0.5%) and will hopefully now go away and leave Stroud in peace.

We look forward to SNJ printing this letter as our right to reply,

Yours faithfully,

Read our previous letter to Saskia Whitfield’s backers, including screenshots of her social media posts

Our letter to the people backing Nazi-sympathising candidate for MP

Nazi-sympathiser stands as Independent candidate for Stroud’s MP

Richard House & Marcus Blackett have nominated the Cheltenham resident, who shares Hitler quotes and promotes the idea we should have fought on Hitler’s side, not against him

Dear Richard, Marcus, and associates,

We note that Richard House and Marcus Blackett have nominated and seconded an individual, Saskia Whitfield, as Independent candidate for Stroud in the General Election.

We also note that the “Info Hub” stall on the High Street has a large banner encouraging people to vote for Independent candidates, and the same recommendation is made in “The “Light” paper that you distribute from the stall.

We have looked at the candidate Richard and Marcus have nominated, Saskia Whitfield.

On her social media, Saskia Whitfield quotes Hitler. She denies there was any deliberate massacre of Jews in the Holocaust. She promotes claims that Britain’s Allies “fought on the wrong side” in WW2 and “should have fought with the fascists…not the other way round”, mentioning that her grandfather was “in the Luftwaffe”. She repeatedly shares a fascist history website headed with a Joseph Goebbels quote from January 1945 about a “Jewish Clique”. She states that LGBTQ “Pride Is A Sin”. She repeatedly puts forward the idea that Hitler “cleaned up perverted Berlin” and that “once again” it’s time to do the same. [scroll or click to see screenshots below].

These are not cherry-picked nor very old comments – not that that would be OK. Most of them are very recent, and there are many more in this vein.

We think most people in Stroud will be as appalled as us at the idea that someone with these ideas should be put forward as a potential Member of Parliament for the area.

Were you aware that she held these ideas? Or did you propose her as a candidate without checking her social media output?
As you have nominated her candidacy, please tell us if you support these ideas?
Where did Whitfield get the idea these views might find a receptive audience in Stroud?
Do you still support her candidacy?

We look forward to your response, which we will make public alongside this letter [see below],

Yours sincerely,

Community Solidarity Stroud District

Copied to Stroud News and Journal, Stroud Times, Amplify Stroud

Responses

We sent our open letter above to Richard House, Marcus Blackett and the media organisations listed at 8.56pm on Sunday 23rd June 2024. As of Wednesday 26th June, the only substantive replies we have received from people who nominated and seconded the candidate are as follows:

At 10.47pm on Sunday 23rd June, Marcus Blackett said: “which social media please? There’s nothing on FaceBook”
At 11.42am on Monday 24th June, Marcus Blackett asked “can you please provide references, thank you.”

We sent the screenshots published below at 1.03pm on Tuesday 25th June, before receiving the following response:

At 11.24am on Tuesday 25th June, Marcus Blackett said “my comment is: sheer puerilty and Richard via text as he is on holiday is: We will not be timetabled by any arrogantly dictated ‘deadlines’“

We had not mentioned any deadlines, only that the letter had been copied to local media. If we receive further substantive responses from those who nominated and seconded the candidate, we may publish them here.

On Saturday 29th June, Marcus Blackett handed a member of our group a leaflet by Saskia Whitfield, Independent candidate for MP. It is titled “A Truth-seeking Prospective MP for Stroud” but the content implies it is a response to our piece above. We have published her response via a photo below, but wish to make some introductory remarks to it:

We are a group of local people who politely asked questions of those who have nominated a candidate for MP with a record of nasty social media posts. The characterisation of our group as authoritarian or interested in censorship, manipulated by some external conspiracy, or opposed to all “who question mainstream narratives” is false. The Holocaust is a historic fact – not merely a narrative. The Nazis were authoritarians who burned books – this was not a matter of “cleaning up perverted Berlin” but censorhip and authoritarianism. We believe believe Saskia Whitfield’s record of posts on social media is relevant to her suitability as candidate for local MP – this is not a question of “character assassination” but basic scrutiny of someone who wants to represent a constituency of over 100,000 people.

It is rare that we recommend even a paragraph from “The Light” paper distributed by the ‘Info Hub’ stall including people who have nominated Saskia Whitfield, but they did issue some good advice this month to “study the statements of individual, and especially independent, candidates, demand answers to questions they might seek to avoid, and vote for them according to their individual merits and character“. We think that the examples from her social media [screenshots are below] provide clear indications about Saskia Whitfield’s “merits and character”. The idea that they represent a “courageous committment” to “truth” is preposterous.

In neither her latest leaflet nor any email we have received from people who nominated Saskia Whitfield is any apology is made for the social media posts we identified, nor is any attempt made to distance herself from the views contained within them. Instead, her leaflet reads as an attempt to present Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and support for fascism as the obvious result of research into family history. This is odd because you’d expect someone researching the period would come across the evidence and arguments that show these things not to be “the Truth” but discredited conspiracy theories and prejudice. Her firm statements are laughably presented as “always provisional” “research-based conclusions”. We encourage people not to fall for this attempt to make Saskia Whitfield’s nasty social media output appear acceptable or reasonable – no matter the number of words, pretensions of academic language, or attempts to appeal to those interested in alternative ideas. No pasaran!

Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Stroud District statement

On the 1st July, the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign posted the below on their Facebook page:

"With the upcoming election only days away, PSC Stroud District wanted to make sure we are all aware that one of the independent parliamentary candidates for Stroud - Saskia Whitfield, is a Nazi sympathiser and an anti-Semite. She is presenting herself as pro-Palestinian and clearly using this important cause to promote her own campaign. This is not just bad for Stroud community relations but really undermines the hard work of the movement for Palestinian freedom. Read Community Solidarity Stroud District article on this."

Evidence

Content warning – antisemitism and homophobia.

What follows is a small selection of representative posts by Saskia Whitfield. They are not cherry picked, and not old. There are many other recent posts in a similar vein. They are deeply unpleasant and we choose to share only the bare minimum necessary to make the point.

Saskia Whitfield quotes Hitler

She denies there was any deliberate massacre of the Jews, by sharing comprehensively debunked theories about the gas chambers, as well as numerous other posts with other familiar holocaust denial tropes

She promotes claims that Britain’s Allies “fought on the wrong side” in WW2 and “should have fought with the fascists…not the other way round”, mentioning that her grandfather was “in the Luftwaffe”.

She repeatedly shares a fascist history website headed with a Joseph Goebbels quote from January 1945 about a “Jewish Clique”.

She states that LGBTQ “Pride Is A Sin”.

She repeatedly puts forward the idea that Hitler “cleaned up perverted Berlin” and that “once again” it’s time to do the same.

Updated leaflet on transphobia and homophobia launched at Stroud Pride 2024

We were at Stroud Pride today sharing a stall with friends from Stroud Against Racism.

We handed out updated copies of our leaflet on why we should Bin “The Light” paper because it promotes transphobia and homophobia – the text of which is copied below. Elsewhere on our website you can find a downloadable pdf version of the flyer and more details. We had lots of good conversations at a great event!

Leaflet text:

BIN ‘THE LIGHT’ – it promotes transphobia and homophobia

Community Solidarity Stroud District stands against all forms of hate. We also understand that falsehoods used to ‘other’ people, based on gender and sexuality, hurt everyone by redirecting conversations away from the everyday misogyny and bigotry that is essential in propping up systems that oppress us all.

In recent years, rhetoric rooted in ‘religious right’ claims from the USA in the 1970s and 1980s that centred on how gay men were supposedly ‘child molesters’ and ‘paedophiles’ who were out to ‘recruit children’ has been revived. Around the 2000s, when false claims were losing their effectiveness against gay and lesbian people, the religious right shifted their efforts toward instead targeting people of other non-heterosexual sexualities, and then trans people.

This is happening to some extent in various media channels, including mainstream newspapers – but the free paper “The Light” is a particularly nasty QUEER-BASHING HATE-TABLOID.

“The Light” has published articles by many people who are homophobic and transphobic. It also gives credence, through praise and through web links, to groups and people that promote hate and mistrust of anyone that falls outside of their blinkered ideology. “The Light” continues to equate gender non-conformance to paedophilia, views affirming parents as abusers, references surgical procedures for trans people using fictional statements.

As just one example (see overleaf for more): in edition 23 it stated “As the month of July descends into a rainbow-festooned festival of the Globohomo Cult that shall no doubt see us all having to watch the unedifying spectacle of police officers twerking beside their re-branded, multicolour clown cars in cities across the nation, the question must surely be asked just how much longer can society stomach being force-fed this most degenerate form of diversity”. The issue also contained a cartoon of a parent asking their child “How was school?” and the child responding by vomiting a rainbow, to ram their anti-LGBTQ hatred home.

Community Solidarity Stroud District stands against all forms of hate.
Learn more: communitysolidaritystrouddistrict.org

Side two

BIN ‘THE LIGHT’

Joan Ginsburg (issues 8, 19, 25) equates parents allowing children to express their gender outside of the binary to paedophilia. Says “puberty blockers usually lead to surgical transitioning with the result that young people are being maimed and sterilised before they have even had their first kiss”. This is, of course, statistically untrue, it is devoid of any fact. Ginsburg is a vocal supporter of the ‘Public Child Protection, Wales’ group which seeks to exert an authoritarian rule over children’s autonomy. It promotes an opt-out to unconditional love by accepting bigotry as a parenting style. Issue 33’s International News focuses on an Australian document supposed to show that it is illegal for parents to refuse gender-affirming care for their children. The documents actually says no such thing; it says that sending your child to a known conversion therapist out-of-district will be construed as… sending your child for conversion therapy.
There are regular links and advertising in “The Light”: Off-Guardian, UKColumn and Unity News Network – all media outlets that promote disinformation about trans people (as well as about anyone else outside of their politically and economically-privileged world).
Another favourite link of “The Light” is to the wonderfully titled TheRedPillRevolution.com. “The Light” enjoyed using this site via it’s writer Ben Hunt and his attempt to ‘man harder’ under the guise of a supposed fear of a ‘War on Masculinity’ in issue 31. Apparently, “gender is now being presented as a lifestyle choice”. It is sweet that this website pays homage to the red oestrogen pill used by trans women in the 90s referenced in the film the Matrix, written by two trans women as an allegory for transitioning.
Ben Hunt (again) in issue 32 describes a trans woman who was listed in ‘Women of the Year’ by USA Today as “Exhibit C: Richard (“Rachel”) Levine”. He argues that a blurring of gender lines is such a falsehood that we could lose the meaning of ‘adult’. “Can a child now be reimagined as an adult, say when it comes to sexual consent?”. Conflating gender diversity with paedophilia is a throwback to the commonly used vitriolic homophobia of the 1970s (and still prevails now, although less often).
Jose Hermosa, in issue 10, is linked under his article from theBL.com, where he also protests children’s TV “looking for the little ones to normalize these new sexual orientations that are destroying the morality of humanity”.
“The Light” is somewhat obsessed with sex and all its connotations, bringing it into many, many articles over its, so far, 45 issues.
Niall McCrae has a number of entries in “The Light”. He is an active member of the Bruges Group (and wrote a pamphlet for them that used the usual antisemitic tropes of The Great Replacement and Cultural Marxism). McCrae wrote Green in Tooth and Claw – a book that views same-sex attraction as subversive. He writes on several right-wing sites with scathing criticism of anything LGBTQ+.
Alex Jones, before McCrae’s Light popularity, was cherished for his attacks aimed at ‘mainstream’ media and his views on government-corporate takeovers but neglect to mention that Jones asserted that the government is creating gay people through “a chemical warfare operation”, or Jones’ threat to come after drag performers with torches “like the villagers in the night”.
Finally… In something of a ‘self-own’ in issue 35, “The Light” describes the use of the word Inclusivity as mainstream media speak for “Collectivism; no individuality allowed”. “The Light” appears to have missed that the point is to accept all individuals. Yet “The Light”, time and again, clearly has a problem with anyone who falls outside of their accepted norms.

Learn more: communitysolidaritystrouddistrict.org

Silent protest against “The Light”

On Saturday 1st June, members of Community Solidarity Stroud District held a silent protest in the High St, opposite the ‘Info Hug’ stall. We were ensuring that people knew that the paper they hand out, “The Light”, publishes John Hamer – a Nazi sympathiser, Holocaust denier and Islamophobe. The people giving out “The Light” like to pretend that they support peace and freedom but they and the paper continue to promote the ideology of the far right.

Our dignified and non-confrontational approach enraged the supporters of “The Light”, and they shouted at us angrily for most of the hour that we were there. We did not respond in kind.

Thank you to the many people in Stroud who gave us their support on Saturday, and we will see you again.

Placards reading "The Light paper publishes Nazis" "People of Stroud said NO to John Hamer & Project Libertas celebrating Hitler's birthday", "John Hamer (who writes for The Light paper) Holocaust denier and Islamophobe"

The Light appoints Holocaust denier John Hamer as a regular contributor

The Light appoints Hitler-lover John Hamer as a regular contributor.

Not so long ago Project Libertas, an offshoot of the local group of supporters of “The Light” paper announced a pair of meetings celebrating Hitler’s birthday and promoting the antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The speaker was to have been self-described “full-time geopolitical researcher” John Hamer, who promotes hatred of Jews and Muslims online. Hamer supports white nationalism, denies the Holocaust (which he calls the “Holofraud”) and a piece by John Kaminski published on his website says that “those leaders who allowed the Muslim invasion of Europe to occur should be tried for treason and executed for failing to protect their own people”.

Strong opposition from local community groups forced Project Libertas to cancel the meetings. Project Libertas emailed us and their contacts to say they were sorry for “the distress caused by a poster that seemed to suggest support for fascist and antisemitic views”. “Stroud Info-Hug” wrote that “the iconography and feel of these promotional materials could easily and justifiably be construed as unalloyed Nazi apologism”.

It hasn’t ended there, though. The latest issue of “The Light” announces that the paper will provide Hamer with a regular column “writing on history’s biggest events” in each monthly edition. A full page is given to an uncritical interview of Hamer by the paper’s editor Darren Smith, under the headline “Official history: The greatest deception”, promoting Hamer’s book and online channels.

Among the claims Hamer makes which “The Light” has decided to publish are that the Rothschilds started WW1 to take revenge on European monarchies, that they ensured the rise of Hitler to get rid of too-powerful Germany, and that “Judea declared war on Germany in the early 1930s”.

These conspiracist claims are not merely ones based on prejudice against Jewish people rather than evidence, but are antisemitic conspiracies popularised by the Nazis themselves.

Both the interview and the promise to adopt Hamer as a regular columnist are much worse than “The Light” paper’s defence of Cornwall-based Holocaust denier and genocidal racist Graham Hart. That article, in November 2021, led to the founding of Community Solidarity Stroud District. Back then “The Light” misled readers about the nature of the case and defended Hart on “free speech” grounds, and didn’t actually publish his views at all. Now it’s so happy with John Hamer’s views that it is to make him a regular contributor.

Hamer is a Holocaust denier. On his website was a page dealing with this description, which he notes “many” people have applied to him. We have edited this paragraph to update it – as of 10th June 2024 Hamer has taken this page down from his website. It was there until the 1st June 2024, however, and was stored by the Internet archive – we have also published screenshots below. It had been on his website since at least the 14th May 2024. We believe it was originally posted some time before this, but reposted when Hamer relaunched his website around May this year].

In the piece Hamer wrote:

“What I do deny however, is the ridiculous and exaggerated claim that there is ANY evidence at all that ANY Jews, much less ‘6 million’ of them, died from ANY intentional gassings or as a result of ANY kind of organised or systematic programme of genocide perpetrated against Jews by Germany’s Nazi regime… and I challenge ANYONE to produce ANY evidence or ‘proof’ that is not merely made up of either pre-war, wartime or post-war Soviet, American and British anti-German propaganda… because none, from either then or now, actually exists.”

These are the words of a Nazi-sympathiser, someone who preposterously thinks any evidence can be dismissed as propaganda, that anything detailing Nazi crimes is ‘anti-German’.

Elsewhere on his site, Hamer publishes a piece by John Kaminski [one of several – this one is still there, but we link to an Internet Archive store of it] which says:

“The real fake news is that Hitler wanted to take over the world and killed 6 million Jews to do it” […] Hitler only wanted his original country back, and for the Jews to leave Germany alone. […] Jews need to be excluded from civilization, permanently.”

This Nazi-sympathising language is shocking and disgusting. The quotes we have provided here are not isolated, or dated. The two quotes above are from pieces that were posted to the current version of the website on the 14th and 15th May 2024 (the website has clearly been relaunched in April 2024). Among the 40 most recent posts (originally made over a longer period but republished recently), at least 10 contain hatred directed at Jewish people, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and/or Holocaust denial.

Granting Hamer a regular column is not an accident or a mistake by the editor of “The Light”, but part of a pattern that we feel reveals the intent of the paper. Hamer has been published twice by “The Light” previously – back in April 2021. The Editor is clearly familiar with his work, and has chosen to promote it. It’s increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that “The Light” is a vehicle for introducing people worried about vaccines, or technology, or interested in health and wellness, to the ideas, organisations and personalities of the far right – including Nazi-sympathisers.

We ask readers to sign our statement as residents of Stroud, Dursley, and other parts of Stroud District who do not want to see The Light paper being distributed where we live. This is not a petition to any authority, but a request to those handing out the paper to reconsider what they are doing given the content of the paper and the level of community opposition.

Sign our Statement: Stop sharing “The Light” in Stroud

Screenshots of Hamer’s website

The below captures both the headline of the interview with Hamer in The Light, and some of the antisemitic, Holocaust denial, and blatant material directing hatred toward Jewish people hosted on John Hamer’s website. Some is written by Hamer himself, some by John Kaminski – a particularly antisemitic author he regularly publishes pieces by. There is far more, but we do not wish to spread more of it than is necessary.

We issue a strong content warning and condemnation of this material, but feel it necessary to include it here to evidence the claims we make above.

As of 10th June 2024 Hamer has taken the above page down from his website. It was there until the 1st June 2024, however, and was stored by the Internet archive

The above two screenshots are from a piece Hamer republished by John Kaminski [this one is still there, but we link to an Internet Archive store of it]. Hamer publishes many of these pieces with similar language from Kaminski – it’s hard to imagine any reason for doing so other than that he agrees with them.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – what’s that?

When advance notice of a meeting on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion circulated in Stroud in early March, many people just thought ‘What’s that?’

The Protocols were first published in English over a hundred years ago. But the fact that the event was paired with another celebrating the birthday of Adolf Hitler may have given a clue.

This publication is one of history’s most toxic antisemitic texts. Not just conveying proven lies, it is a call to action which underscored Nazi violence culminating in the Holocaust. A literal “warrant for genocide”.

Consider the history: The Protocols made an initial appearance in 1903 in the Russian newspaper Znamia, reappearing again two years later as part of a religious tract by a Tzarist civil servant (1905). 1903-1905 were notably a high point in the violent history of Russian pogroms, with the New York Times reporting on ‘scenes of horror’ with piles of corpses and the wounded, and no attempts by police to intervene.

The Protocols were translated into German, French, English, and other languages. It’s still a live idea, and regularly surfaces in anti-Jewish contexts – most recently at the US Republican National Convention.

The document claims to be a report of meetings held Switzerland in 1897 in which Jews and Freemasons made a plan for world domination, undermining Christian civilization and constructing a world state. Liberalism and socialism were the means to this supposed end. Many of the details would be familiar to conspiracy-mongers today.

As early as 1921 the Protocols was exposed as a crude forgery. Some of the text was lifted from a satire on Napoleon’s ambitions for world rule published in 1864, and some from Biarritz, an anti-Jewish German novel published in 1868, in which a meeting of Jewish elders is presided over by the Devil himself..

In 1934 a trial in Switzerland found the Protocols to be an antisemitic forgery. The Russian historian Vladimir Burtsev, sometimes called the “Sherlock Holmes of the revolution”, provided documentary evidence of the forgery.

And still the Protocols continue to circulate, in print and in new incarnations on the internet.

Thanks to community opposition the meeting planned in Stroud to promote the Protocols as a “Blueprint for the 20th and 21st centuries” was cancelled. But this was not the first and likely not the last time we’ve heard them promoted locally. Community Solidarity Stroud District will continue to expose and challenge the promotion of this conspiracy theory and other antisemitism locally where we find it.

Think before you vote in the Police and Crime Commissioner elections

Why we wont be voting for the “independent” candidate

It’s the local elections this Thursday. CSSD doesn’t have any party political affiliations, and tries to ensure we welcome people with different preferences.

We also know that many people are frustrated with political parties and prefer to vote for Independent candidates. Often there are no issues with this, and we have been grateful for the support from councillors who are standing as Community Independents in the Stroud District Council elections.

However, we want to warn people away from voting for the “Independent” candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner position for Gloucestershire: Matthew Randolph.

Matthew Randolph is being supported by the stall which hands out The Light newspaper in Stroud (and the similar stall in Gloucester). His campaign is part-funded by a single anonymous donation of £2,000. [see images below]

Randolph has been using the election to push anti-vaccine and anti-5G ideas – but his website and leaflets do not mention these in anything but a vague “dogwhistle” way. His online presence makes clear his is a climate denier and proudly “tinfoil hat” conspiracist. [see images below]

We won’t tell you who to vote for, but we do think you should all know that Randolph isn’t the sort of Independent candidate to support.

The other candidates in the election are Martin Surl for the Liberal Democrats (who was previously the PCC as an Independent), Ashley Smith for Labour and the Co-operative Party, and Chris Nelson for the Conservative Party (who is the current PCC).

You might not even have known that there was a PCC election – but make sure you vote in it, and vote for anyone except this “independent”.