‘I went undercover at an extremist religious sect in Kent where Holocaust denial lives on'

A priest repeating Holocaust denial, a worshipper declaring a former synagogue should be burned to the ground and links to figures from far-right political movements.

Reporter Dan Esson went undercover at a breakaway religious sect in Kent to discover whether the extreme views of its notorious founder live on…

It’s a humid morning in Broadstairs, I’m drenched in sweat beneath my suit, and I’m being asked if I’m “quite good on the Jews” in the dimly-lit kitchen of a former guest house.

Am I “Jew-wise”, I’m pressed.

Joe and I have only just been introduced, though we’ve been sitting on the same pew for about an hour and a half listening to the Latin Mass.

He doesn’t know I’m a journalist. As far as he’s concerned, I’m Daniel Owens, a lapsed Catholic looking to return to the Church.

The middle-aged court typist from Sandwich, who originally hails from Cheshire, is very keen to express the sort of beliefs I thought I’d have to work a bit harder to capture on my hidden recorder.

When the conversation turns to the former synagogue in Margate, he says “thank God” it’s no longer in use, his northern accent still unmistakable despite having moved to Kent many years ago.

“It should be burned to the ground.”

“Father” Stephen Abraham, the main priest in residence, tells me that Jews have constructed a “mythology” around the Holocaust.

“They’ve created that myth because they’re experts; they have the media, the money to spin these stories,” he says.

I focus my eyes everywhere but his, as he continues: “They’re hiding the fact they’re taking over everything, or taking over the bits that matter.”

Presumably Joe and “Father” Abraham wouldn’t have been so open with these opinions if they knew who I was, but neither realised their newest recruit was wired up.

For more than a decade, this group, the Society of St Pius X Resistance (SSPXR), has operated from the property in Broadstairs.

It was founded by the late Richard Williamson, a convicted Holocaust denier and prominent conspiracy theorist whose extreme views made him one of the most controversial clergymen of recent decades.

He died last year, with his funeral held in Canterbury, but the organisation he headed is still operating from the building he bought on the Thanet coast more than a decade ago.

I went undercover to find out if his brand of antisemitism and conspiracy theories were still alive with the congregation he left behind.

Becoming ‘Daniel Owens’

I created a false identity as Daniel Owens, a call centre worker and lapsed Catholic interested in returning to the Church.

After exchanging several emails with Alun Rowland, who operates the group’s email address, I was invited to Sunday Mass.

I had been led to believe that for the young men involved in this group elsewhere in the country, clean-shaven or heavily moustached was the fashion, so I tried my best at the latter.

They expect Sunday best for services, so I wore my suit. Women, even extremely young girls as I later saw, are expected to be veiled.

I worried that I would sabotage my own cover identity by accident, but the first time I attended I was nearly rumbled by fate itself.

One member of the church turned out to be the uncle of one of my school contemporaries, whom I pretended not to recognise when he showed me a picture. Thankfully, his nephew wouldn’t have known of a Daniel ‘Owens’, so my identity remained intact.

The sizeable property is crammed full of religious paraphernalia, and what was once the front room is now a makeshift chapel, complete with creaking pews and an ornate altar. A wooden screen in the adjoining room serves as a confessional booth.

On Sundays, the pews host a small congregation, with Mass conducted in Latin and the priest facing away from worshippers, as was customary before the reforms of the 1960s.

It’s all smells, bells and dead language, and as far as this sect is concerned, the only proper way to celebrate that sacrament.

Traditionalists revere the Latin Mass for its beauty, history and the use of the Church’s ancient language.

In a cathedral with a choir, Gregorian chanting and an organ, I could see the aesthetic appeal.

Minutes after the end of my first Mass, while I pour a cup of tea, I’m quizzed about my views on Jewish people.

Joe, a member of the congregation, asks whether I’m “quite good on the Jews.”

When I ask what he means, he continues: “Jew-wise?”

I lie that I don’t know any Jewish people personally, and cautiously choke out that I’m “sceptical”.

“You understand their role in the world and that type of thing?” asks Alun Rowland, making a vague globe shape with his hands.

“Well, if you listened to Bishop Williamson, he wouldn’t go through many sermons without mentioning them.”

The conversation moves on, but later returns to the subject when I mention a former synagogue in Margate, which is now used as a community and arts space.

Joe asks whether I’ve ever been tempted to go inside “and get a snip”.

When I explain the building is no longer used as a synagogue, he replies: “Well, thank God for that. It should be burned to the ground.”

The priest and the Holocaust

Shortly after, I speak to Father Abraham alone.

I ask about the questions concerning Jewish people that had been put to me earlier and whether Williamson’s views on the subject remain important to the organisation.

“He liked being more flashy and controversial,” he says.

He continues, recounting the views that catapulted Williamson to international infamy.

“The mythology that they create around themselves, things like the Holocaust, and the fact the Holocaust was…Nobody knows how many people were killed.

“As Bishop Williamson famously said to the Swedish journalists, not in Germany but broadcast in Germany, there may have been a few hundred thousand Jews who died, but none of them through gassing.

“They’ve created that myth because they’re experts; they have the media, the money to spin these stories.”

“To what end?” I ask, curious as to what he thinks the purpose of this supposed Jewish conspiracy is.

“They’re hiding the fact they’re taking over everything, or taking over the bits that matter,” he replies.

“They’ll complain about everything they lost at the same time they’ve got in hand all the money, the media, politics, every major domain is under their... and Freemasonry of course.”

While unusual to hear so openly, these are well-worn anti-semitic conspiracy theories, not cooked up by this sect specifically.

Claims that the accepted death toll of the Holocaust - the systematic murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany - is false or inflated have been comprehensively discredited, along with Williamson’s claims denying the use of gas chambers.

To justify his views, Father Abraham had earlier invoked biblical passages, including references to the “synagogue of Satan” and Jews as enemies of humanity,

But the hostility clearly isn’t all spiritual in nature.

Separately, Alun mentions, unprompted, Father Abraham’s plans to meet with “The Albanian” - apparently someone interested in the group.

“Just a rancid migrant, illegal,” Joe claims. “He might have knives and guns with him, very violent people.”

I don’t know any biblical reason to disdain that Balkan race, but maybe I’ve been looking at the wrong translation.

Too extreme even for the traditionalists

Richard Williamson’s journey to Broadstairs began with a rebellion against the Vatican – and ended with him falling out with the rebels themselves.

In 1970, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), rejecting reforms that had modernised the Catholic Church, including encouraging Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin.

Crucially, the reforms also rejected the idea that Jewish people collectively bore responsibility for Christ’s death and condemned religious and racial discrimination.

Williamson became one of the Society’s bishops, but his Holocaust denial - broadcast on Swedish TV - caused international outrage in 2009. He was subsequently convicted in Germany over his views, which he never recanted.

Expelled from the SSPX in 2012, he established an even more hard-line tendency known as the ‘Resistance’, buying the Broadstairs property two years later.

He also became a prolific online conspiracy theorist, claiming Covid was part of a plot to depopulate the world and that the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks were inside jobs.

Williamson died last year, aged 84, but a deep online reservoir of his speeches and writings continues to draw followers to the SSPXR.

“It’s through Bishop Williamson, mostly,” Father Abraham admits.

“They see these things on the internet.”

Politics over lunch

After my third Mass, I sit down to lunch with several members of the congregation, and the conversation turns to politics.

Among them is Dennis Whiting, a former British National Party (BNP) activist, who tells me he stood as its parliamentary candidate for Dover in the 2010 general election.

“So I was able to vote for a traditional Catholic,” Alun Rowland interjects.

The BNP is a far-right, white nationalist party with a history of antisemitism.

When I ask Alun about his own political involvement, he describes it as “all ideological stuff, Third Position, neither capitalism nor communism, what the church teaches.”

Third Positionism is widely regarded as neo-fascist. Its British movement emerged from the National Front, combining extreme nationalism and racial separatism with traditionalist Catholic beliefs.

When I suggest that Third Positionism is a form of fascism, Alun rejects the label.

“That word [fascist], what does it even mean?” he asks. “They called the Nazis fascist; that’s totally different ideologies.”

He then tells me Roberto Fiore, a prominent Italian neo-fascist, was an “old friend, when he was living over here.”

Fiore helped establish the International Third Position alongside future BNP leader Nick Griffin, before co-founding Italy’s neo-fascist Forza Nuova party.

As these discussions unfold, I’m sitting around a table alternating between a slice of ham and cheese quiche and a mincemeat empanada.

There was no vegetarian option, and I thought revealing my dietary requirement could raise questions about whether I’m a godless leftist.

Attracting new followers

Given the sect’s small size, they seem enthused to have attracted a younger newcomer.

After my second Mass, I’m given a book on the catechism for converts. When I open it at Broadstairs railway station, a white hair falls out, thicker, curlier and longer than any on the heads of those who had been present.

I’m also recruited to an online religious instruction class, led by a Brother Philip from an affiliated religious community in Swaffham, Suffolk.

“Your cat and your dog, your cucumber and your carrots, they have souls,” he tells us, speaking in front of a Google Meet background of a Roman basilica.

There is a surprising number of women in attendance, and an unusually high concentration of Liverpudlians.

In Broadstairs, the group is also attracting prospective clergy. By my third visit, several young men - from Ireland, Sevenoaks and London - have joined as seminarians.

Father Abraham regularly travels to London to celebrate Mass, while Williamson’s successor, “Bishop” Paul Morgan, spends much of his time in France. The movement also has links to Brazil, Ireland and northern England.

Its online presence helps connect followers scattered across Britain and overseas, with Williamson’s sermons continuing to circulate long after his death.

‘No place for antisemitism’

As far as the actual Church is concerned, SSPXR followers are not real Catholics.

The group’s members reject much of the modern Church’s teaching and authority, while the Church itself explicitly rejects antisemitism.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales tells me: “The Catholic Church rejects and stands against antisemitism in all its forms. It has no place in the Church or in wider society.

“We oppose racism of any kind and remain steadfast in our commitment to building bridges and engaging in mutually enriching dialogue with those of other faiths.”

‘Our superpowers are rather overestimated’

Since the Israel-Hamas conflict of 2023, reported incidents of antisemitism in the UK have soared, according to research published by the House of Commons Library.

Kent has a relatively small Jewish community, historically concentrated in Thanet, which is home to one of the county’s only two functioning synagogues.

Responding to our findings, Rabbi Cliff Cohen, of the Ramsgate synagogue, said antisemitic conspiracy theories have existed for centuries.

“Within the last few years, the Jewish people has been accused, among other things, of being behind the 9/11 atrocity, causing Covid - by shooting it from lasers in space - killing the Pope and deliberately causing the banking crash.

“We are not saints by any means, but I think our superpowers are rather overestimated by these deluded people.”

He added that holding antisemitic views was not itself illegal, and believes there is little the Jewish community can do to challenge them.

“Education is the only solution, but they would have to want it, which won’t happen, and if they believe that Jews are all liars, they would not be persuaded by anything I could say to them,” he said.

Coming clean

Early on a Friday morning, I returned to the house with a colleague and a camera, ready to reveal my true identity.

I’d hoped Father Abraham would answer the door, but instead it was Alun Rowland who appeared.

I told him my real name and purpose and offered him a handshake, which he declined.

“I did have my suspicions,” he claimed, although our lengthy email exchanges and political conversations suggested he’d been happy to take me at face value.

Alun Rowland declined to respond to us, or to send Father Abraham out to do so, instead telling us to leave.

We subsequently emailed him, setting out our findings and asking him to pass them on to Father Abraham and Joe, the member from Sandwich. None responded.

Williamson’s legacy

Small radical movements are often held together by the charismatic authority of a leader, and members of the SSPXR seem to know quite well that Williamson was, and remains, their greatest recruitment tool.

In his earlier appearances online, he paces back and forth, firing off insults at modernists and liberals and twisting historical claims to support his arguments.

In later recordings, his voice and vigour sapped by age, he resembles a more familiar modern-day conspiracy theorist.

The SSPXR remains a tiny movement on the fringes of Catholicism, but the internet allows its members to connect with like-minded people and spread their message far beyond Kent.

They may claim to uphold two millenia of tradition, but they are in many ways very 21st century.

I arrived in Broadstairs wondering what, if anything, remained of Williamson’s more extreme beliefs among those who had followed him.

Three Masses and one uncomfortable lunch later, I had heard a priest repeat his Holocaust denial and a worshipper call for a former synagogue to be burned to the ground.

Williamson may be dead, but in the house he left behind, some of his most disturbing ideas live on.