Sir James Gunn, 'Conversation Piece' (1932)

A triple portrait of (sitting down) G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc - the original intellectuals behind British fascism - together with their friend (standing) Maurice Baring

(via NPG 3654; Conversation piece (G.K. Chesterton; Maurice Baring; Hilaire Belloc) - Portrait - National Portrait Gallery) 

The Philosophy of British Fascism

At first glance Mosley’s take on the philosophy of fascism is quite as reliably unconventional as his ideas were about almost anything else. From the Abdication Crisis to the European Common Market, his views were hardly ever predictable and seldom less than startling. On close inspection, however, and beneath the standard Mosley bluster, his understanding of the intellectual phenomenon of fascism is actually quite acute and fits surprisingly neatly into the wider fascist expression.

Now I believe, as it so often happens in daily life, that creeds which appear to be so dissimilar are in fact susceptible of some reconciliation when examined more closely, and indeed of a certain synthesis; and I think I can show you that actually, in the Fascist doctrine today, you find a complete wedding of the great characteristics of both creeds. On the one hand you find in Fascism, taken from Christianity, taken directly from the Christian conception, the immense vision of service, of self-abnegation, of self-sacrifice in the cause of others, in the cause of the world, in the cause of your country; not the elimination of the individual, so much as the fusion of the individual in something far greater than himself; and you have that basic doctrine of Fascism— service, self-surrender—to what the Fascist must conceive to be the greatest cause and the greatest impulse in the world. On the other hand you find taken from Nietzschean thought the virility, the challenge to all existing things which impede the march of mankind, the absolute abnegation of the doctrine of surrender; the firm ability to grapple with and to overcome all obstructions. You have, in fact, the creation of a doctrine of men of vigour and of self-help which is the other outstanding characteristic of Fascism.

Therefore we find—I think I can claim—some wedding of those two great doctrines expressing itself in the practical creed of Fascism today. And that, in fact, works itself out in our whole attitude to life. We can bring it down to the smallest details of general existence. From the widest and most abstract conception we can come down to the most detailed things of daily life. We demand from all our people an overriding conception of public service, but we also concede to them in return and believe that in the Fascist conception the State should concede, absolute freedom. In his public life, a man must behave himself as a fit member of the State, in his every action he must conform to the welfare of the nation. On the other hand he receives from the State in return, a complete liberty to live and to develop as an individual. And in our morality—and I think possibly I can claim that it is the only public morality in which private practice altogether coincides with public protestation—in our morality the one single test of any moral question is whether it impedes or destroys in any way the power of the individual to serve the State. He must answer the questions: “Does this action injure the nation? Does it injure other members of the nation? Does it injure my own ability to serve the nation?” And if the answer is clear on all those questions, the individual has absolute liberty to do as he will; and that confers upon the individual by far the greatest measure of freedom under the State which any system under the State, or any religious authority has ever conferred upon the individual.

[The Philosophy of Fascism – OswaldMosley.com]

The simplest way to think of fascism philosophically speaking is of course as “right-wing Marxism”*. For all Marx's own bluster, his great revolutionary idea was little more than English liberalism overlaid with French socialism and then given ideological form by German idealism (specifically that of Hegel). If you swap socialism for syndicalism, and then swap liberalism for liberal nationalism (which, if it does not degenerate into Marxist socialism, ultimately just becomes nationalism), you get almost exactly what Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini describe as classical fascism.

Christian socialism (or "social Christianity"- because despite Leo XIII’s protestations in Rerum Novarum the two things were essentially the same) on the other hand really built itself on a ideological base of Prussian socialism, albeit with a sugar coating of Christian morality. And in practice in Ireland and Austria it pretty quickly devolved into fascism in all but name - all the populism, all the anti-Semitism, all the silly flags and funny uniforms, and so on. And of course swap the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ with the Sacred Blood (and Soil) of our Forefathers and you can get from Christian Socialism to National Socialism in pretty much a single bound. 

In practice, funnily enough, it was really the British Empire - not to mention Charles Darwin, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and even, albeit indirectly, Cecil Rhodes, et al. - who provided the "racialist" background reading that was so essential to the Nazi project. (And of course throw in the swastikas, the concentration camps and a paramilitary youth movement and you're most the way there. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that Hitler's favourite writer was Shakespeare and his favourite film was The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.) So it is hardly to be wondered at that Tom Mosley's "British" fascism comes across as hardly racist, nationalist or anti-Semitic at all - or rather no more consciously so than any instinctive, patriotic supporter of the British Empire might (however unfairly!) have been accused of being. In fact to build an ideology that is recognizably fascist on a base of "British imperialism" all Mosely really needs are a heavily socialised Anglican version of Christianity to supply the "socialism" and some German idealism to top it all off, only this time supplied by Nietzsche (with Spengler getting an honourable mention) rather than Hegel.

In general then there's not very much more to Mosley's fascism than the standard left-right synthesis of (typically oxymoronic!) generic "revolutionary conservatism" - trying to harness the vitality and egalitarianism (though Mosley insists on equality of opportunity rather than of outcome) of liberalism and socialism to the natural order, hierarchy and above all (of course!) authority of conservatism, producing a "Caesarism" but of the people, with complete private freedom and complete public duty and discipline. Mosley just puts it better than any "fascist" leader on the continent ever did.

In retrospect of course it's in keeping with the apparently self-contradictory nature of fascism that it should find perhaps its finest expression in England - that most self-contradictory (with the possible exception of Prussia) of all nations. And for good measure it's no less congruous that this most anti-intellectual and populist of creeds should find its finest ideological exposition in the mouth of an eccentric aristocrat!

Whatever else one might say about Oswald Mosley, if you want to "understand" fascism he's worth reading.

*I.e not really right-wing at all, but we can leave that.

The Nazi Legacy

Not so long ago I remember there was an anti-baldness shampoo advertised on the telly which, like several other products at the time, made a positive virtue of being German. In other words it followed very much in the footsteps of car manufacturers such as Audi and of course Volkswagen (of which of course Audi has been a subsidiary since 1966) in proclaiming loud and clear that its German-ness was a mark of quality. In a country like England, which still has a passion for Holocaust movies and documentaries about the Battle of Britain, this was of course quite remarkable. But just imagine what other products could try the same trick.

Let's start with cars then. Not only was Volkswagen famously Hitler's favourite car manufacturer, but he actually named its most famous model - 'the Beetle'. And whether or not you drive a German car, you're quite likely to be insured by a German car insurance company - namely Allianz, whose director general in the early 1930s Kurt Schmitt went on to become Hitler’s Reich Economics Minister from June 1933 until January 1935*. Schmitt also became a member of both the National Socialist Party and the SS, rising to the rank of Brigadeführer, the equivalent of a one-star general. Eduard Hilgard, a member of the board of Allianz, became head of the Reich Group for Insurance in 1934. He represented the insurance industry in a conference summoned by Hermann Göring after the November Pogrom of 1938. Hilgard reported on the material damages caused during the Kristallnacht Pogrom and the estimated sums insurance companies had to cover.

Of course it was not merely German car manufacturers who invested in the Nazi war machine! Albert Speer himself acknowledged that the Blitzkrieg of 1939 would not have succeeded without the support of General Motors - or, more specifically, its German subsidiary Opel. And of course Ford too supported the Nazis - although his support was ideological and only in their early years. Time magazine though went so far as to make Hitler its Man of the Year for 1938. (The cover was an anti-Hitler cartoon by a German Catholic exile, but the magazine's founder, rather more ambiguously, referred to Hitler as the year's most influential man 'for better or worse'.)

But where better to drive your Nazi car than on a Nazi autobahn - on which, thankfully for the European economy, there is still no speed limit. At least one of Hitler's dreams lives on - even if it is the same as Jeremy Clarkson's! And if you need to refuel, there'll probably be an ExxonMobil, Chevron or BP somewhere along the way - the successor companies of Standard Oil, which was the Nazi war-machine's most important fuel manufacturer.

Not that it's just cars, of course! Various industries found much to be gained by cooperating with the Nazis. During the war years Siemens, who now make the trains I go to work on in the morning, were making switches for military use and even had their own slave labour camp actually inside Auschwitz. The most notorious beneficiary of the Nazi regime though was of course the chemical industry. Kodak and Agfa, who nowadays make cameras, and BASF, who make pesticides, as well as the pharmaceutical companies Sanofi-Aventis and Bayer - whom we have to thank for first producing aspirin - were all members of the German chemical conglomerate I G Farben, whose directors after the War eventually ended up being put on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

Nazi culture has in fact survived in various other ways as well. Nobody had heard of Hugo Boss before he was chosen to design those beautiful SS uniforms. Nowadays he's one of the modern fashion world's biggest brands. Ditto IBM, until they helped to compute the numbers of Jews being rounded up during the so-called "Holocaust". The Swedish founder of Ikea too was also a Nazi sympathiser. And Fanta, which is nowadays simply an orange-flavoured version of Coca-Cola, was actually invented by Coca-Cola's German distributor as a wartime alternative to the (famously/notoriously American) soft drink because at the time they couldn't get the ingredients for the Real Thing. The German film company UFA, which distributed such Nazi hits as Triumph of the Will, is still going strong today - though it is now owned (ultimately) by the Nazi publishing giant Bertelsmann, who also own Random House. The Nazi holiday camp Prora has recently been reopened.

So, you can still wear Nazi designer clothes and use a Nazi computer whilst working for a Nazi investment bank. At the end of the day you can return from the office on a Nazi train to a home furnished with Nazi furniture. When you go on holiday you can drive a Nazi car, insured by a Nazi insurance company and fuelled at a Nazi petrol-station by the side of a Nazi road, and you can then stay the night in a Nazi youth hostel. You can even take your holiday snaps using a Nazi camera. If it all gets too much for you then why not take a Nazi painkiller and relax by reading a Nazi book published by a Nazi publishing house or by watching a Nazi film distributed by a Nazi production company - whilst sipping a Nazi soft drink.

So, where's all this headed? Well, in all probability the Euro-sceptics really have been right all along. The "new" Europe will, in fact, end up looking very much like it was always going to - at least from the 1930s onwards. Even such modern and politically correct causes as "ethnic diversity" nowadays have their own Nazi heritage. Many European ethnic minorities are today represented by FUEN, which was originally founded in 1949 to support displaced Germans who had supported Hitler but found themselves on the wrong side of the new borders that had been drawn up by the Allies. A similar organisation is the YEN or Youth of European Nationalities organisation. And if you're a budding young politician who has successfully contributed to the "harmony" of Europe's different peoples and nations then you may even end up being a candidate for the Robert Schuman Prize, which is presented by the Alfred Toepfer foundation, which was itself founded by (you've guessed it!) a German entrepreneur with close ties to the Nazi regime.

UPDATE: And if you fancy some Nazi running kit and training shoes (or at least some trainers made by a company founded by and named after a man who used to make jackboots for the Wehrmacht) then there's always Adidas. That's 'Adi' as in 'Adolf', the Adolf in question being Nazi Party member Adi Dassler (after whom the company was named). His brother Rudolf or 'Rudi' Dassler, who was also a Nazi, went on to found his own footwear manufacturing company, called Ruda - later renamed Puma.

*Schmitt's successor as Economics Minister was Hjalmar Schacht, who had been deputy director of Dresdner Bank. Dresdner Bank was also complicit in the Nazi regime, although since the war it has thrived and prospered, now owning investment bank Kleinwort Benson. Another bank that was useful to the Third Reich was Chase Bank.

Chris Bryant MP on the Causes of the Second World War

There can be few politicians in the House of Commons today more politically and personally disgusting than Captain Underpants. His recent ranting screed in The Grauniad (puffing his new book*) attacking the British aristocracy rather gives the lie to the notion that either he or the "New Labour" project are or ever were "moderate".

Of rather more interest though is his weird recent pantomime dame performance in the House calling for perverts of the past to be pardoned for crimes for which at the time they were duly and properly sentenced.

One of those he mentioned was one John Macnamara MP, one of the anti-appeasement "golden boys" of the 1930s who eventually shrieked us into a second and even more disastrous war with Germany in 1939. And for a fanatically pro-war, Marxist loon like the Captain, that was a Good Thing! Macnamara was an MP, a soldier, a favourite of Winston Churchill, a "right-wing" Tory and, most eerily of all, a former member of the Anglo-German Fellowship.

What Captain Underpants didn't mention of course was that Macnamara's secretary had been Guy Burgess, another homosexual, a Communist traitor, and, of course, a fellow member of the AGF - his intention having been to misdirect any suspicion of his pro-Russian sympathies by being ostentatiously pro-German. According to Burgess himself, Macnamara organised various fact finding tours to Germany, which invariably ended up including little romantic flings for the two of them with various attractive young Hitler Youth boys. (Jedem das seine, I suppose!)

So, what could possibly have made Macnamara come over all anti-German later on?

Well gee, that's a hard one!

Of course, having successfully got his war and implored Churchill to give him something nice and dangerous to do, he eventually ended up on the receiving end of a German mortar in Italy in 1944 and didn't live to see the end of the slaughter that he'd formerly so ardently wished for. Jedem das seine indeed, one might conclude! But it's difficult not to think that the real tragedy of John Macnamara was not that he was a brave man written off as a pansy by the nasty homophobic British Establishment (including, er, Churchill, presumably?) but that deep down he may well have been an honourable man of peace who was blackmailed into both supporting and dying in a stupid and pointless war because of his own personal weaknesses.

I have no real doubt that the Second World War was merely a continuation of the First, and that delenda est Germania had been Anglo-French policy since before Queen Victoria's body was cold. (The old Queen had died in the arms of her favourite grandson; the new King had liked going to Paris, where he'd sit in a golden bath and get wanked off by French prostitutes. Let's be honest, it wasn't going to end well.) At the same time, claims that the war was at least in part caused by shadowy cabals of socialists, Semites and sodomites aren't entirely without foundation.

*It's published by Penguin Books. (Who else?) And there's a photograph of an underage child on the front cover. (How nice!)

If Tintin was Hitler's son, could James Bond have been Britain's Hitler?

As any fule kno, when Hitler first joined the (proto-)Nazi Party he was still working for Bavarian military intelligence.

Now read on.

In an unpublished memoir, [Maxwell] Knight recalled that he joined the first of the Fascist Movements in the United Kingdom, Rotha Lintorn-Orman's* British Fascisti, in 1924, "at the request of the late Sir George Makgill who was then running agents on behalf of Sir Vernon Kell (Major General Sir Vernon Kell, Director General of the British Security Service, MI5). I remained with this organisation until 1930 when it more or less became ineffectual. My association with this body was at all times for the purposes of obtaining information for HM Government and also for the purposes of finding likely people who might be used by this department for the same purposes." 

[Wikipedia]

Funny to think what might have been! Again as is well known, the son that Hitler never had later claimed that he'd been the inspiration for Tintin. Could the inspiration for James Bond in turn almost have been Britain's equivalent of Hitler?

It's a thought.

*In Britain fascism became quite the thing for chicks who swung both ways.