My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyfamiliar with the detail of the thinking, and it then becomes the feeling of the mass. Adecisive idea thus transmuted into mass feeling can cause the birth of a newcivilisation. Without such an idea, action is in the void, and without action the ideaalso rests in the void.This truth has been well understood and applied in practical affairs by men whowould appear the least likely to grasp it. For this reason, Stalin, amid all the brutalitiesof his actions, still tolerated and even encouraged the intellectuals, who must oftenhave maddened him for much the same reasons which led Plato so unexpectedly tosuggest the exclusion of poets from the Republic. Mao clearly felt the same necessityin encouraging both 'a hundred blooms' of the intellect and the development of theRed Guards. Lenin, who more than any other Russian communist leader, exceptpossibly his close associate Trotsky, combined in himself the qualities of reflectionand of action, undoubtedly recognised the same synthesis as a prerequisite of anymovement of humanity to a new form, though it was less evident in his conductduring the turmoil of his period.Fascism too derived much from its intellectual antecedents and by no means onlyfrom the relatively modern sources usually ascribed to it such as Sorel, Pareto,Proudhon, Nietzsche, and earlier English writers and men of action like Hobbes,Strafford, Bolingbroke, and later Carlyle. Some years ago Dr. Popper brought theindustry and erudition of central Europe to London University and in his book,TheOpen Society and its Enemies, virtually denounced every outstanding thinker fromPlato to Hegel as a fascist: I gladly accepted the gift, and expressed my appreciationfor this confirmation of what I had long suspected.Marxism was the negative of the nineteenth century, and yet communism requiredthis intellectual background for any enduring success; more is needed than a bundle ofgrievances. A fortiori, the power of intellect and imagination will be necessary to theEuropean creed which will be the positive of the twentieth century. During the longyears since the war I have given my main energies to this necessity.Time was too short for fascism to burgeon into a new culture which would later cometo flower in a new civilisation. Indeed, the organic nature of fascism precluded a newculture in the sense of any sharp break with the past, because in essence it preservedand restored classic European values. I had already done the thinking which hadproduced a series of practical proposals to meet the immediate danger and long-termneeds of my country; the urgency was then to implement them in practical action. Itwas not therefore just barbarism when at this stage I said that the men who can thinkare not enough, and I must go out to find the men who can feel, and do. It wasrecognition of a truth beyond the intellectuals with whom I was associated, and itdeeply offended them precisely because it was beyond them. It is essential to surpassthis antithesis of intellect and feeling in a synthesis which embraces both at a newlevel of thought and action.When my original intellectual associates fell away in the shock of action whichresisted organised violence, it was suggested that thereafter I was surrounded bystupid brutes who were conveniently classified as thugs. In fact, new intellectualsemerged from the study under the impact of those events, who at least equalled inmind and certainly surpassed in character those who had departed. In my company266 of 424