Radio Aryan host claims podcast was ‘not racist’
A PODCAST host on trial accused of stirring up racial hatred has claimed the content of his show was not racist.
James Allchurch, 51, from Pembrokeshire, is on trial at Swansea Crown Court charged with 15 counts of distributing audio material to stir up racial hatred over a two-year period.
Radio Aryan, since renamed Radio Albion, was described as “highly racist, antisemitic and white supremacist in nature” by prosecutors.
Giving evidence yesterday, Allchurch said he disagreed with the term racist and told the court he thinks “we should celebrate our differences”.
Allchurch claimed his use of racial slurs was not intended to cause offence, and said he believed he was using “accurate terminology”.
Dressed in a dark suit and tie, and wearing glasses and with his hair tied into a ponytail, Allchurch told the court he is disabled and unable to work, and spends around 12 hours a day creating podcasts and maintaining his website.
The court has heard previously that Allchurch accepts donations via a Bitcoin link on his website, but the defendant said he does not receive a formal salary from the platform.
Describing himself to the jury as an ethno-nationalist, Allchurch said: “Essentially I’m a British nationalist but I am also a European, that’s my wider family. I have sympathies with my wider family in countries like America, Australia who share the same ancestry with me.”
Allchurch said race and ethnicity was “central” to his world view and stood by his belief that there are “measurable, statistical differences” between races.
His defence barrister, Emily Baxter, said: “Some people might say that talking about differences between races in that way is racist, would you agree?”
Allchurch replied: “I would not. I think we should celebrate our differences.”
Fifteen episodes of the podcast published between May 17, 2019, and March 18, 2021, have been played to the jury in which Allchurch can be heard discussing topics such as grooming gangs, immigration, crime, film and other subjects.
In the recordings, Allchurch is often joined by guests, including the nowjailed National Action co-founder Alex Davies and American neo-Nazi Daniel Kenneth Jeffries, who went by the nickname Grandpa Lampshade.
Jonathan Rees KC, prosecuting, said the defendant used discussions on news and current affairs to “espouse his hateful views on racial supremacy, black people, other non-white people, Jewish people and the race war”.
Under questioning by his own counsel, Allchurch claimed he did not intend to spread hate and only advocated for “non-violent protest against multiculturalism”.
Allchurch, who on the podcast went by the alias Sven Longshanks – a reference to King Edward I, who was also known as Edward Longshanks and was responsible for expelling Jews from England in 1290 – said he did not think his “stage name” was antisemitic.
He added: “I don’t consider King Edward I to be antisemitic. He cared about the Jews.”
The trial continues.