Oswald Mosley, Blackshirts in 1930s Britain; Fascism's Cult of Hate Must Be Beheaded Again

Last edited Sun Oct 6, 2019, 12:46 AM - Edit history (1)

Why we have to cut off the head of fascism again and again. From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in 1930s London to the recent violence in Charlottesville, the cult of hatred lives on. The Guardian, Sept. 8, *2017.

In 1934 the Daily Mail called Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, “the paramount political personality in Britain”. The BUF was then enjoying a wave of popular enthusiasm and its membership was up around 34,000. Blackshirts marched through British towns and cities, and new recruits were encouraged simply to fall in behind. There was high unemployment in Britain at the time, particularly in the north, and Mosley’s appeal was in part the promise to restore jobs. A charismatic megalomaniac of immense wealth, convinced he was born to rule, Mosley also attracted support from middle-class Tories.



It has been evident for some time that a violent element of the American far right identifies closely with the European fascism of the 1930s. These neo-Nazis repeat the slogans and ape the beliefs. They are extreme nationalists. They are antisemitic, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and racist. Straight-arm salutes and swastikas are displayed with pride, and there’s a readiness among them to march, chant and fight in the streets, even to drive a vehicle at speed into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters.

The demagogue is indispensable to any fascist movement if its members are to be inspired and held firm to their commitment to take to the streets and spill blood. Fascism does not arise from rational sources. It does not require rational argument to sustain its followers. Fascists are deaf to reason. They sneer at reasonable argument. It is the role of the demagogue to arouse and direct their rage towards the scapegoat, most commonly the racial Other.

This was apparent recently in Charlottesville, in the US, and the demagogue who excited the murderous rage that day, and later excused it, was Donald Trump. Trump is still clinging to public office. Mosley, on the other hand, saw his movement flag and fail. Although he was vastly more intelligent than Trump, and of a far higher level of political sophistication, he was not swept into power on a wave of violent disorder, as he had hoped. Instead he was sent to prison when war with Germany was declared in 1939, along with a number of his lieutenants.

That was not the end of it, of course. Fascism is one of those creatures which, once its head has been cut off, soon enough grows another one. Little remembered today is that at the end of the war, with German cities in ruins, Hitler dead and nazism seemingly destroyed, Mosley and his men were released from prison. Undeterred and unrepentant they went straight back to what they’d been doing before the war...

More, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/08/fascism-must-be-resisted-wherever-it-raises-its-head

BBC, Who Was Sir Oswald Mosley? ('Peaky Blinders' Drama) Aug. 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-49405924
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley



- Mussolini and Oswald Mosley in Italy, 1936.

(Slate, Mosley) [Mosley's] protectionist-nationalist emphasis made an obvious appeal to frustrated Conservatives and to workers in depressed industries. Although the BUF was finally disbanded by the British government after the outbreak of World War II, Mosley easily outflanked his right-wing rivals in the 1930s with his relentless attacks on successive governments for promoting imports of foreign goods, and on city financiers for damaging British manufacturing and agriculture by making loans to foreign countries: “These are alien hands which too long have held their strangle grip on the life of this country…”

In 'The Greater Britain,' he rehearsed the recent failures of British politics arising from a system almost calculated to prevent governments from governing, and he frankly advocated a more authoritarian state which would be above party and sectional interests..Despite the common ground between his movement and continental fascism, Mosley was anxious to present the BUF as a British form of fascism. Mosley envisaged his movement as a progressive modernizing one capable of attracting working men and ex-Socialists by its social program.

There is no doubt that Mosley was the BUF’s chief asset; he quickly elevated it into a far more serious proposition than the earlier fascist organizations. His main weapon proved to be his masterly platform performances, which numbered about 200 a year...
More, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/04/why-the-british-union-fascist-movement-appealed-to-so-many-women.html