Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
fervently opposed. Many more members came from
elsewhere, including preexisting smaller UK Fascist
movements. Amongst them were the British Fascists,
an old group of simplistic upper-middle-class
reactionary blimps who had previously been active
in trying to break the 1926 General Strike. Joining
them were more recent and more vicious groups of
Nazi cheerleaders, whose chief motivation was a
pathological hatred of ‘Jewry’. Of equal importance
and greater number were natural Tories driven to a
new radical dynamism against the perceived socialist
threat. This contingent was personified by Daily
Mail owner Lord Rothermere, a friend of Mosley’s
who threw his paper behind the new movement
wholesale. Meanwhile, the movement was secretly,
and illegally, receiving a large chunk of its funding
direct from Fascist Italy, and, increasingly, (as the
anti-Semitism increased) from Nazi Germany too.
The degree of the extent of Mosley’s anti-Semitism
is central to the conundrum of his character. It is interesting
to contrast his personality with that of Hitler, the
man he so desired to emulate, failing so spectacularly.
There is no doubt that Mosley was not possessed of
the overwhelming personal hatred of Jews that so
engulfed Hitler. He had several Jewish friends prior
to the BUF. His rival, the hysterically overwrought
anti-Semite Arnold Leese, leader of the tiny, ultrafanatic
Imperial Fascist League taunted Mosley as a
BUY Stephen Dorril books online from and
“kosher Fascist” for this very reason. Amusingly, one
of Mosley’s early New Party stalwarts was a Jewish
East End boxer named Ted “Kid” Lewis, who exited
the movement with a punch to Mosley’s nose when the
latter confirmed that yes, he did intend his movement
to be anti-Semitic. Furthermore, Oswald explicitly did
not sign up to the facetious and insane pseudo-science
the Nazis used to justify their race hatred, casually
denouncing it as gibberish. He mocked the notorious
forgeries the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion too.
The very fact he could then lead a movement openly
engaged in repeated violence against this scape-goated
racial group shows the black-hearted, gangster opportunism
at the core of his being. The hatred of the Jewish
enemy was a galvanising myth to a movement which
otherwise had little to tie it together, and he knew it.
With characteristic dishonesty, Mosley dismally
pleaded self defence in his campaign against the Jews,
claiming “they started it.” Mosley came to advocate
the expelling of all Jews from Britain who had shown
‘disloyalty’. Where they were to go was unclear,
Madagascar, or possibly Uganda (“very empty and a
lovely climate” helpfully offered Mosley’s second wife
Diana, formerly Guinness, formerly Mitford.) It is an
interesting rumination of what constitutes a truer evil,
the deep-felt fanaticism of a Hitler or the gutter-shallow
opportunism of a Mosley. It is however, much easier to
see which was more successful.
199
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z