Oswald Mosley: Jew-hater or philosemite?

[Ixtab]

Antisemites have denounced the British Union of Fascists as 'philosemitic'. Is this true?

Here is a YouTube of Mosley:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=F0rDVUDRl3w

And here is a YouTube clip of one of his speeches:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MrvhZCfnqew

[Thomas777]

Mosley was niether. He was a very reasoned man to whom history has not been kind.

Why don't you visit www.oswaldmosley.com (http://www.oswaldmosley.com) if you are genuinely interested in learning about the BUF?

[Ixtab]

Why don't you visit www.oswaldmosley.com (http://www.oswaldmosley.com) if you are genuinely interested in learning about the BUF?I have. I knew about that website. It doesn't have much to say on the Jewish question.

[ogenoct]

I would also be very interested in Oswald Mosley's opinion on Jews. Does anybody have any relevant information?

Constantin

[Thomas777]

I have. I knew about that website. It doesn't have much to say on the Jewish question.

It does address the Battle of Cable Street and that event brought tensions to the fore regarding the BUF's platform on the Jewish issue.

Speaking about the BUF generally, Mosley exhibited quite a bit more prescience than did many of his Fascist contemporaries, both in the UK and on the Continent. Mosley appreciated that another great War was on the horizon and he understood that this would usher in the collapse of Europe's states as great powers. Essentially, Mosley was the first statesman to openly advocate a platform of "Europe a Nation", and he was moved to do so not just out of concern over the Bolshevik threat, but because he knew that a divided Europe could never rival the awesome economic (and attendant military might) of the burgeoning American hegemon.

Mosley, Stresseman, and Speer (at least IMO) understood that America's industrial juggernaut was fed by America's massive, captive, domestic market and that only a consolidation of Europe's capital (economic and demographic) and a massive military effort towards conquering the Eastern hinterland would present an opportunity to challenge the New World Order on the horizon.

In other words (as Adam Tooze claims in his book, albeit indirectly) Mosley turned his back on America and called for Britain to join Europe.

The man was a dreamer, and if and when reason returns to the West, he will be missed.

[Thomas777]

I would also be very interested in Oswald Mosley's opinion on Jews. Does anybody have any relevant information?

Constantin

Read the William F. Buckley interview: http://www.oswaldmosley.com/archives/firingline.htm

This interview is fascinating.

[ogenoct]

http://www.oswaldmosley.com/misc_documents/antisemitism.htm

Antisemitism

More drivel is talked about the Jews than most subjects; both ways. The views that all Jews are born wicked, or that all Jews should be the sacred objects of the system, seems to me equal nonsense. I am neither an anti-Semite, nor a sycophant of Semites. The attitude of our movement has been both consistent and intelligible throughout. We have never attacked any man on account of race or religion, and we never shall. But we attack any man, whatever his race or religion, who acts against the interests of Britain or Europe; particularly Britons who ought to know better than to serve alien interests. It is a straightforward attitude, which has been formed by clear principles.

Why then have we been involved in clashes with Jewish interests, and why are so many Jews violently against us? The answers again are clear. Before the war I believed that certain great Jewish interests were trying to involve us in war, not in a British, but in a Jewish quarrel: I still believe it. The reasons for our belief and for the Jewish action are equally intelligible. It is true that a considerable number of Jews were having a bad time in Germany, and it can also be argued that if a similar number of Englishmen had been having an equally bad time in Germany, there would have been a demand among many Englishmen for war against Germany. But it is beyond question from the evidence of the period, that powerful Jewish interests were trying to produce war between Britain and Germany. They made it their business to start a war in the Jewish interest. I, and my friends, made it our business to stop that war, in British interest. That led to a head-on clash, and I still think that we were right in doing our utmost to prevent that war.

The issues between us, and those Jews before the war, were therefore quite simple and clear. They wanted to make a war, and we wanted to stop it. That is the long and the short of the whole matter. There was no question of racial persecution on our part. That was entirely contrary to our principles, which I put on public record at the time. We British were running a great Empire composed of many different races, and any suggestion of racial persecution would have broken it up. For practical, as well as moral reasons, it would have been the gravest error for us to pursue a policy of any kind of racial persecution. The Germans had entirely different national problems, as well as in some respects, a different national character, which was derived from a diversity of historic experience.

Our duty then, was to hold together and develop a multi-racial Empire. Their task, was to bring together and unite, the German peoples of one race. Because we wanted entirely different things, there was no need whatever, for a clash between us. The man you were apt to quarrel with, is the man who wants the same thing you do. The closely related peoples of Britain and Germany were by every design of nature complementary powers; a sea power concerned with a great Empire, and a land power concerned with its own people in a continental land mass.

The crime of those who then ruled Europe on both sides was to permit the division of Europe, which resulted in fratricidal war. The division of Europe was the supreme crime. It is true that the British Government actually declared war in a quarrel which was none of our business. But the errors of the German Government certainly assisted that act, and the consequent catastrophe. The world combination of their enemies against them was facilitated by the precipitate arrogance of the "patience exhausted" line, which provides a striking and instructive contrast to the more adroit and successful policies of characters so different as, Bismarck and Khrushchev. But the fatal line-up against Germany was above all aided by their anti-Semitic policy, which enabled their main enemies, in the international finance world, to build up a front against them. These errors brought to nought, all of the great social achievements of the National Socialist movement.

We, always rejected the nonsensical doctrine that a whole people were born wicked, and doomed to sin and damnation from birth. This is the deep moral and intellectual error of anti-Semitism, which has for a long period impeded the whole movement of European renaissance; despite all its wide diversity of form, in different countries. Neither before, during, nor after the war, did we have anything to do with the doctrine of anti-Semitism. Our policy now remains the same. When after the war, at the time of Suez, some Jewish interests were trying to drag us to war, not in a British, but Jewish quarrel, we again attacked them. We have neither fear nor favour; we attack men not for what they are, but for what they do. When you see in some periods little or nothing about Jews, in our speeches or publications, it does not mean that we have changed our principles, but that at this time we see nothing to quarrel about. We only attack a Jew, a Gentile, an Englishman or an Eskimo, when he is doing something against the interests of Britain.

But, reply those possessed by a fuddled anti-Semitism, many Jews are doing something wrong all of the time. Quite right, we reply, and so are a number of Englishmen and members of other peoples of this island. The point is, that we are going to bring all of these damned rackets to an end, whoever does them. Those who run the rackets will find themselves either in jail, or out of the country, whoever they are. We shall do this by the fearless application of existing law, which could stop this corruption, if the government itself were not corrupt. If this is not enough, we shall ask the people to give us the power to make new laws. We are going to smash this corruption. That will solve the problem.

If the views of the anti-Semites were correct, then all Jews would be caught by these laws; so they have nothing to bellyache about. But, of course, their view is not true, because no people have what the Victorians called "a double dose of original sin". The only effect of this foolish opinion is to let the big rogues go scot-free.

While anti-Semites are busy pursuing the little Jews, the big villains of all races who run international finance are sitting back and laughing at them in the City, or Wall Street, or in kindred haunts of the usury species. How many of them were ever caught by the Nazis ? On the contrary, the error of some Nazis played right into their hands, and gave them the weapons to defeat the European renaissance in every country. Now comes again, in a newer and higher form, the renaissance of the European man; this time not to lose, but to win.

[Mike Jahn]

Easy answer--he was a flip-flopper, he would attack the Jews and then retreat from it when he received too much criticism from the press.

[Lord Nengwen]

Sir Oswald Mosley was actually neutral on the jewish question from my understanding.

The main reason he got into the jewish question was that it was required of him to recieve financial support from National Socialists.

I don't have a problem with that considering he was facing one of the worst people ever born...


http://www.natvanbooks.com/cat/1150.gif


Sir Mosley was very mush a positive in my opinion!

[Maponus]

A few things should be held in mind when discussing the old knights views on Jews:

Tolerant Mosley

1) Mosley regarded anti-Jewish conspiracy theories as bunk believed only by "cranks".

Intolerant Mosley

However this may have more to do with Mosley's general contempt for conspiracy theories, which he believed impossible.

Tolerant Mosley

2) Many of Mosley original comrades were Jews. Notable Jewish members of British Union included John Beckett (BU Director of Publications and Editor of Action, Bill Leaper - Editor of the Blackshirt, and Harold Soref - a BU Standard Bearer at the Olympia meeting who later became Tory M.P for Ormskirk. Also Mosley was taught German during his wartime imprisonment in Brixton Gaol by another BU internee: Albert Lynden (aka Lewinska), a Polish-Jew who was a member of British Union's Ealing branch.

Intolerant Mosley

Yet the BUF still contained strong strands of anti-Semitism despite offical denial, as shown by the appointment of extreme Jew hater and pro-German William Joyce to the influential position of director of propaganda, which gave the "crazy mixed up Irishman" the power to use the BUF as a platform for his own anti-Semitism. Rank-and-file anti-Semitism was also common, especially in the east end. This lead Orwell to call Mosley a man "devoid of ideas".

Tolerant Mosley

3) The anti-Semite ant hill king Arnold Leese and his Imperial Fascist League called Mosley a "kosher Fascist" and his movement the "British Jewnion of Fascists. A rabbi even declared that "our best allies against the Imperial Fascists are the Mosley Fascists themselves".

Intolerant Mosley

Unlike the Imperial Fascist League, British Union actually had real nazi connections, as best exemplified by "perfect Aryan" Unity Mitford, sister of Diana Mosley and widely suspected as being "Hitler's British girl".

Tolerant Mosley

4) The British Union is said to have been more influenced by Mussolini, who held racist views in contempt (while expressing a few of his own at the same time), than by Hitler. This view was happily promoted by post-war Mosleyites.

Intolerant Mosley

While the British Union started off as a clearly Italian inspired venture, it began to move closer towards the German ideology as the war approached, changing it's name to the "British Union of Fascists and National Socialists" and adapting more anti-Semitic motifs, references to German achievements and a SS-reminiscent "Action Press Uniform" (though the Mosleyites claim it was based on the Brigade of Guards).

[Maponus]

Some facts:

1) The BUF programme as expressed in the "Hundred Questions" supported deportation of Jews with all wealth they had "fairly gained". Whether this meant all Jews I am uncertain.

2) Mosley never supported a Jewish homeland in Israel, and was one of the few voices in British politics to seriously attack the anti-British Zionist terrorism practised by Irgun.

3) Jewish organisations continually attacked British Union and it's post war successors. Many sympathetic historians claim Mosley's drift towards National Socialism was caused by this hostility, and others visa versa.