Dear Editor,
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.
Shocked and horrified by this, local anti-racist groups took action, responding particularly to the distress felt by local Jewish people.
On Monday 25th the Nazi meeting organisers emailed their mailing list to say that they have cancelled the event.
Clearly, this is a win.
Thank you to everyone who stood up to reject Nazism, including the 415 who signed our open letter in just a few days.
But the danger of the far right hasn’t gone away. This is not an isolated incident.
We are going ahead with a public meeting this Saturday 30th March at 3pm in the Trinity Rooms (opposite the hospital). We invite you to join us to share ideas about how we respond to the threat this has highlighted.
People are struggling every day in our community, from rising bigotry, the cost of living crisis, the fallout from COVID, and a political system that isn’t meeting our needs.
Far right organisers are using these problems to prey upon our community and scapegoating people who are blameless, as they have done throughout history.
The organisers of these Nazi events (who previously organised events with Katie Hopkins and others) 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’.
We hope many of your readers will join us at our meeting on Saturday afternoon (and at our social event in the same venue in the evening.
Signed
Adam Horovitz, Caroline Molloy and Jacqui Stearn, on behalf of Community Solidarity Stroud District (CSSD), Emma Calcut and Freddie Janke, on behalf of Stroud Against Racism (SAR), Caroline Beatty, on behalf of Stroud District Together with Refugees, Roma Robinson and Nora Doweswell, on behalf of the Radical Youth Space for Education (RYSE).
Community Solidarity Stroud District
communitysolidaritystrouddistrict.org
